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The fact that both excitation and the PL of these nanocrystals are in the biological window of optical transparency, combined with their high quantum efficiency, spectral sharpness and photostability, makes these nanocrystals extremely promising as optical biomaging probes. NIR-to-NIR PL bioimaging was demonstrated both in vitro and in vivo through visualization of the NIR-to-NIR PL at ~900 nm under incoherent lamp light excitation.
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NaGdF 4:Nd 3+/NaGdF 4 nanocrystals, synthesized in organic media, were further converted to be water-dispersible by eliminating the capping ligand of oleic acid. Time-resolved PL measurements revealed that this high quantum yield was achieved through suppression of nonradiative recombination originating from surface states and cross relaxations between dopants. The absolute quantum yield of NIR-to-NIR PL reached 40% for core-shell nanoparticles dispersed in hexane. When excited at 740 nm, the nanocrystals manifest spectrally distinguished, near infrared to near infrared (NIR-to-NIR) downconversion PL peaked at ~900, ~1050, and ~1300 nm. We have synthesized core/shell NaGdF 4:Nd 3+/NaGdF 4 nanocrystals with an average size of 15 nm and exceptionally high photoluminescence (PL) quantum yield.