Light upconverting core–shell nanostructures: nanophotonic control for emerging applications

Light upconverting nanostructures employing lanthanide ions constitute an emerging research field recognized with wide ramifications and impact in many areas ranging from healthcare, to energy and, to security. The core-shell design of these nanostructures allows us to deliberately introduce a hierarchy of electronic energy states, thus providing unprecedented opportunities to manipulate the electronic excitation, energy transfer and upconverted emissions. The core-shell morphology also causes the suppression of quenching mechanisms to produce efficient upconversion emission for biophotonic and photonic applications. Using hierarchical architect, whereby each shell layer can be defined to have a specific feature, the electronic structure as well as the physiochemical structure of the upconverting nanomaterials can be tuned to couple other electronic states on the surface such as excitations of organic dye molecules or localized surface plasmons from metallic nanostructures, or to introduce a broad range of imaging or therapeutic modalities into a single conduct. In this review, we summarize the key aspects of nanophotonic control of the light upconverting nanoparticles through governed design and preparation of hierarchical shells in the core-shell nanostructures, and review their emerging applications in the biomedical field, solar energy conversion, as well as security encoding.