Dual-Mode Long-Lived Luminescence of Mn2+-Doped Nanoparticles for Multilevel Anticounterfeiting

Luminescent nanoparticles with dual-mode long-lived luminescence are of great importance for their attractive applications in biosensing, bioimaging, and data encoding. Herein, we report the realization of up- and downconversion emission of Mn2+ dopants in multilayer nanoparticles of NaGdF4:Yb/Tm@NaGdF4:Ce/Mn@NaYF4 upon excitation at 980 and 254 nm, respectively. The dual-mode emission of the Mn2+ dopants at 531 nm have a long-lived lifetime up to ∼30 ms as a result of the spin-forbidden optical transition of Mn2+ within the 3d5 configuration. After ceasing steady excitation at the two wavelengths, the long-lived feature of Mn2+ luminescence allows a longer persistent time than lanthanide emissions, thereby enabling the ease of data decoding by a cell phone camera under a burst mode. The long-lived green upconversion emission also permits the generation of a long green tail emission upon dynamic excitation at 980 nm. These attributes make the as-prepared Mn2+-doped multilayer nanoparticles particularly attractive for multilevel anticounterfeiting.