稀土上转换发光纳米材料的制备及生物医学应用研究进展

Progress in Synthesis and Biomedical Applications of Rare Earth Upconversion Luminescent Nano Materials

荧光探针技术已经被广泛应用于生物成像、生物标记、生物检测、免疫分析等生物医学领域。传统荧光标记材料,如有机荧光染料、荧光蛋白和半导体量子点,目前面临诸多应用局限,如发光强度不稳定、检测灵敏度低、生物毒性高、自荧光强等。有鉴于此,人们开发了La系金属离子掺杂的稀土上转换发光纳米材料作为新型生物标记材料,该材料受近红外光激发后发出近红外或可见光范围内的高能量光子。这种带有特殊光学性质及良好生物相容性的荧光标记材料克服了传统荧光标记材料的缺点,从而成为材料科学与生物医学交叉领域的研究热点。综述了稀土纳米材料上转换功能的特殊物理机制及其制备和表面修饰方法的研究进展。在此基础上介绍了稀土上转换纳米材料在生物成像、检测、载药、即时诊断器件开发等生物医学工程中的应用。

Fluorescent imaging technology has been widely used in bioimaging, biolabeling, biodetection, immunoassay and other biomedical applications. Traditional fluorescent materials, such as organic fluorescent dyes, fluorescent proteins and quantum dots, faces many limitations, such as low photostability, background autofluorescence, cytotoxicity and limited detection sensitivity. To address these issues, lanthanide （Ln）-doped upconversion nanoparticles （UCNPs） have been developed as a new class of fluorescent material. Such materials exhibit unique fluorescent property known as photon up- conversion, providing tremendous advantages over conventional fluoropbores for biomedical applications. This paper re- views recent advances in the synthesis of Ln-doped UCNPs and their surface modification, as well as their emerging applications in biomedicine. The future prospects of Ln-doped UCNPs for biomedical applications are also discussed.