Effect of surface related organic vibrational modes in luminescent upconversion dynamics of rare earth ions doped nanoparticles

Physical and chemical properties of nanoparticles are known to be subject to the surface factors. For their biological/biomedical applications, typically, surface of the nanoparticles has to be modified which inevitably affects their performance. In this work we have studied the interaction between the surface related organic vibrational modes and the luminescent centers—rare earth ions—in one of the most efficient luminescence upconversion nanosystems—NaYF4. Specifically, the surface quenching centers, the surface related luminescent centers, as well as the role of shell properties, are investigated spectroscopically. Our results demonstrate that the surface related high-frequency vibrational modes can be critical to the spectral properties of the nanosystems once the surface is not well separated from the discrete luminescent centers.