Document Type
Thesis
Date of Award
2024
Degree Name
Master of Science (MS)
Department
Chemistry
First Advisor
Steven Wu
Abstract
Lanthanide doped up-conversion nanoparticles (UCNPs) are excellent luminescent materials due to their ability to perform photon up-conversion from low energy to high energy using their triplet energy metastable states and because of their long-lived excited state. These properties enable multiple applications with the near infrared upconversion emission. They have been incorporated in developing technologies to help curb counterfeiting activities and other areas of research. However, they still have some limitations such as the hydrophobic nature of the UCNPs, and the absence of functional groups that can also help impact other desired features. Thus, in this work we have coated up-conversion nanoparticle (UCNP) with semiconducting polymer nanoparticles (SPNs), which was composed of amphiphilic PSMA (Polystyrene co-maleic anhydride) and hydrophobic semiconducting polymers PFO (Poly (9,9-di-n-octylfluorenyl-2,7-diyl), MEHPPV (Poly[2-methoxy-5-(2-ethylhexyloxy)-1,4-phenylenevinylene, and F8BT ( Poly [ 9,9 – dioctyl – fluorene-alt-benzothiazole] ) respectively. The coating of SPNs on UCNP not only ensures the water solubility of the final product, but also provide a universal strategy to generate blue, red and green fluorescence respectively with different semi-conducting polymers. Developing a dual emission from our synthesized NaYF4(Yb:Tm) @ PFO, NaYF4(Yb:Tm) @ MEHPPV, NaYF4(Yb: Tm) @ F8BT is a promising approach towards anti-counterfeiting as this approach is cost effective, dual emissive and can be incorporated into diverse areas to address counterfeiting.
Subject Categories
Materials Science and Engineering
Keywords
Nanoparticles, Anti-counterfeiting
Number of Pages
53
Publisher
University of South Dakota
Recommended Citation
Ikeji, Abraham Chibuikem, "NEAR INFRARED UPCONVERSION NANOPARTICLES MODIFIED WITH SEMICONDUCTING POLYMERS FOR ANTI-COUNTERFEITING" (2024). Dissertations and Theses. 270.
https://red.library.usd.edu/diss-thesis/270