Lanthanide-doped heterostructured nanocomposites toward advanced optical anti-counterfeiting and information storage

TLDR

The growing demand for secure information storage and transmission drives the need for advanced nano‑photonic materials, and lanthanide‑doped nanomaterials are attractive because of their photostability, multimodal/multicolor emissions, and long lifetimes. We report a multimodal nanocomposite comprising lanthanide‑doped upconverting nanoparticles and EuSe semiconductor. The composite is assembled via a cation‑exchange strategy that integrates the two components. The nanocomposite emits blue and white light under 365 and 394 nm excitation, shows tunable colors under 980 nm when Tb³⁺ content varies, and, with time‑gating, allows modulation of emission color for loading optical information, enabling multi‑dimensional information storage.

Abstract

The continuously growing importance of information storage, transmission, and authentication impose many new demands and challenges for modern nano-photonic materials and information storage technologies, both in security and storage capacity. Recently, luminescent lanthanide-doped nanomaterials have drawn much attention in this field because of their photostability, multimodal/multicolor/narrowband emissions, and long luminescence lifetime. Here, we report a multimodal nanocomposite composed of lanthanide-doped upconverting nanoparticle and EuSe semiconductor, which was constructed by utilizing a cation exchange strategy. The nanocomposite can emit blue and white light under 365 and 394 nm excitation, respectively. Meanwhile, the nanocomposites show different colors under 980 nm laser excitation when the content of Tb3+ ions is changed in the upconversion nanoparticles. Moreover, the time-gating technology is used to filter the upconversion emission of a long lifetime from Tb3+ or Eu3+, and the possibilities for modulating the emission color of the nanocomposites are further expanded. Based on the advantage of multiple tunable luminescence, the nanocomposites are designed as optical modules to load optical information. This work enables multi-dimensional storage of information and provides new insights into the design and fabrication of next-generation storage materials.