DEVELOPMENT OF GADOLINIUM-BASED NANOPARTICLES FOR EMERGING APPLICATIONS

Abstract

Lanthanides-doped nanomaterials have the special capability of converting longer wavelength NIR light into visible emission. In this thesis, one of the functional lanthanide ions, gadolinium, hosted sodium fluoride system (NaGdF4) will be fixed as research object. This attributes to the unique optical and magnetic nature of gadolinium ions, including 1) energy migration bridge; 2) high performance in MRI bioimaging. The first work was focused on tuning upconversion emission of manganese ions in NaGdF4 nanoparticles through alkaline-earth metal doping and bandgap tailoring. In the second work, a smart nanoconjugate was developed for tumor visualization in magnetic resonance imaging based on biomedical engineering of NaGdF4–CaCO3 nanoconjugates. Fine tuning the nanostructure of gadolinium-based nanoparticles offers a tool to add optical and magnetic flexibility to manipulate the attributes of upconversion nanoparticles, thus permitting to improve or broaden the applications of lanthanide-doped nanoparticles in the fields of bioimaging, multiplexing and information security.