NewOpportunitiesforLanthanideLuminescence.pdfVIP

JOURNAL OF wEARTHS JOURNAL OF RARE EARTHS 25 (2007) 257 - 274 www.elsevier.mddomflocate‘jre New Opportunities for Lanthanide Luminescence Jean-Claude G. Bunzli * , Steve Comby, Anne-Sophie Chauvin, Caroline D. B. Vandevyver (Laboratoly of Lmthmide Supramolecular Chemistry, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausmne, BCH 1402, CH-I 015, Lausmne, Switzerlmd) Received 17 April 2007; revised 27 April 2007 Abstlact : Trivalent lanthanide ions display fascinating optical properties. The discovery of the corresponding elements and their fist industrial uses were intimately linked to their optical properties. This relationship has been kept alive until today when many high-technology applications of lanthanide-containingmaterials such as energy-saving lighting devices, displays, optical fibers and amplifiers, lasers, responsive luminescent stains for biomedical analyses and in cellulo sensing and imaging heavily rely on the brilliant and pure-color emission of lanthanide ions. In this review we first outlined the basics of lanthanide luminescence with emphasis on f-f transitions, the sensitization mechanisms, and the assessment of the luminescence efficiency of lanthanide-containing emissive molecular edifices. Emphasis was then put on two fast de- veloping aspects of lanthanide luminescence: materials for telecommunications and light emitting diodes, and biomedical imaging and sensing. Recent advances in NIR-emitting materials for plastic amplifiers and waveguides were described, to- gether with the main solutions brought by researchers to minimize non-radiative deactivation of excited states. The dem- onstration in 1999that erbium tris(8-hydroxyquinolinate)displayed a bright green emission suitable for orgen