Recently, Gd3+-based NIR persistent luminescence nanoparticles have been proposed as highly promising multimodal nanoprobes for full-scale visualization medical techniques in early diagnosis of cancer. However, they still face with some problems, such as hampering further functionalization for the loss of available surface, shortening plasma half-life of the probe caused by inevitable size increase, and reducing SNR because of significant persistent intensity loss. In this study, a novel core–shell structure Gd3+-based NIR persistent luminescence multimodal probe ZGOCS@MSNs@Gd2O3 for T1-weighted MR imaging and NIR persistent luminescence imaging was successfully synthesized using MSNs as the reaction vessels for ZGOCS nanoparticles and the core for Gd2O3 shell. Compared with previously reported Gd3+-based NIR persistent luminescence-based multimodal nanoprobes, the as-prepared nanoparticles enable surface available, no persistent intensity loss and only a slight size increase. Moreover, this multifunctional nanoprobe not only retains excellent NIR persistent luminescence properties with rechargeable ability, but also possesses high longitudinal relaxivity via the Gd2O3 shell, positioning ZGOCS@MSNs@Gd2O3 as highly promising nanoprobe for future multimodal bioimaging.

Nowadays, it is still a great challenge for lanthanide complexes to be applied in solid state lighting, especially for high-power LEDs because they will suffer severe thermal-induced luminescence quenching and transmittance loss when LEDs are operated at high current. In this paper, we have not only obtained high efficient and thermally chemical stable red emitting hybrid material by introducing europium complex into nanozeolite (NZ) functionalized with the imidazolium-based stopper but also abated its thermal-induced transmittance loss and luminescence quenching behavior via coating it onto a heat-resistant luminescent glass (LG) with high thermal conductivity (1.07 W/mK). The results show that the intensity at 400 K for Eu(PPO)-CSi@NZ@LG remains 21.48% of the initial intensity at 300 K, which is virtually 153 and 13 times the intensity of Eu(PPO)·2HO and Eu(PPO)-CSi@NZ, respectively. Moreover, an organic-resin-free warm white LEDs device with a low CCT of 3994K, a high Ra of 90.2 and R9 of 57.9 was successfully fabricated simply by combining NUV-Chip-On-Board with a warm white emitting glass-film composite (i.e., yellowish-green emitting luminescent glass coated with red emitting hybrid film). Our method and results provide a feasible and promising way for lanthanide complexes to be used for general illumination in the future.