Highly Sensitive Upconverting Nanoplatform for Luminescent Thermometry from Ambient to Cryogenic Temperature.

Abstract

Precise assessment of temperature is crucial in many physical, technological, and biological applications where optical thermometry has attracted considerable attention primarily due to fast response, contactless measurement route, and electromagnetic passivity. Rare-earth-doped thermographic phosphors that rely on ratiometric sensing are very efficient near and above room temperature. However, being dependent on the thermally-assisted migration of carriers to higher excited states, they are largely limited by the quenching of the activation mechanism at low temperatures. In this paper, we demonstrate a strategy to pass through this bottleneck by designing a linear colorimetric thermometer by which we could estimate down to 4 K. The change in perceptual color fidelity metric provides an accurate measure for the sensitivity of the thermometer that attains a maximum value of 0.86 K-1 . Thermally coupled states in Er3+ are also used as a ratiometric sensor from room temperature to ∼140 K. The results obtained in this work clearly show that Yb3+ -Er3+ co-doped NaGdF4 microcrystals are a promising system that enables reliable bimodal thermometry in a very wide temperature range from ultralow (4 K) to ambient (290 K) conditions.