Dual Phase‐Controlled Synthesis of Uniform Lanthanide‐Doped NaGdF₄ Upconversion Nanocrystals Via an OA/Ionic Liquid Two‐Phase System for In Vivo Dual‐Modality Imaging

Abstract

A novel OA/ionic liquid two‐phase system combining the merits of thermal decomposition method, the IL‐based strategy, and the two‐phase approach is introduced to synthesize high‐quality lanthanide‐doped NaGdF4 upconversion nanocrystals with different crystal‐phases in OA‐phase and IL‐phase through a one‐step controllable reaction. Oil‐dispersible cubic‐phase NaGdF4:Yb, Er (Ho, Tm) nanocrystals with ultra‐small size (∼5 nm) and monodispersity are obtained in the OA phase of the two‐phase system via an IL‐based reaction. More importantly, water‐soluble hexagonal‐phase NaGdF4:Yb, Er nanocrystals are obtained in the same system simply by adopting an extremely facile method to complete the dual phase‐transition (crystal‐phase transition and OA‐phase to IL‐phase transition) simultaneously. The synthesized lanthanide‐doped NaGdF4 upconversion nanocrystals are effective for dual‐mode UCL imaging and CT imaging in vivo.

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Up-Conversion Nanoparticles for Gastric Cancer Targeted Imaging and Therapy

“…Such as Daxiang Cui's team of Shanghai Jiaotong University synthesized NaGdF 4 : 20%Yb, 2%Er based on the thermal decomposition method. The synthesized nanoparticles have good water solubility the CT imaging and near infrared fluorescence imaging are successfully achieved [34] (see Fig. 1).…”

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