With their dipole-forbidden 4f transitions, lanthanides doped in nanoparticles promise high excited state lifetimes and quantum yields that are required for applications such as composite lasers or nanoscale quantum memories. Quenching at the nanoparticle surface, however, severely reduces the lifetime and quantum yield and requires resource-consuming experimental optimisation that could not be replaced by simulations due to the limitations of existing approaches until now. We developed a versatile approach that fully accounts for spatiotemporal dynamics and reliably predicts the lifetimes and quantum yields of lanthanide nanoparticles.
These results have now been published in the prestigious Wiley journal Advanced Optical Materials. https://doi.org/10.1002/adom.202300096
To demonstrate the potential of the model, we added a neutral shell around the core particles in the model which extends the lifetime by up to 44 %. Furthermore, spatiotemporal analysis of single nanoparticles points toward a new type of energy trapping in lanthanide nanoparticles. The numerical optimisation of such particles allows a time saving of 95 % compared to conventional, experimental methods. Consequently, the numerical optimisation brings applications such as efficient nanoparticle lasers or quantum memories within reach.
