EuTTA fluorescence lifetime and spectral power characterization for its use as an active medium for IR-to-visible conversion

Abstract

We study the feasibility of using the fluorescence properties of the β-diketonate chelate europium (III) thenoyltrifluoroacetonate (EuTTA) in order to achieve IR-to-visible conversion. Previously, we studied the dependence of fluorescence power with temperature and suggested to use fluorescence properties of EuTTA in formation of thermal images. Here we propose to employ the correlation between two fluorescence parameters and the impinging IR radiation, in order to assess temperature distributions. We are developing a self-referenced system to convert infrared into visible radiation, employing EuTTA as the active medium of conversion. The operational principle of the proposed device is based on the variation of EuTTA fluorescence spectral power and lifetime with temperature. In this work, we perform a feasibility evaluation of the system, obtaining figures of merit of the proposed device, including sensitivity, noise, and thermal resolution.