A type I Ru(ii) photosensitizer retained an excellent PDT effect under hypoxia through the formation of highly-oxidative hydroxyl radicals under light irradiation.

We developed a luminescence lifetime-based nanothermometer with a single-exponential luminescence decay in the ~s time scope by introducing photochemical reaction. The luminescence lifetime imaging in vivo can be performed on...

Recently, upconversion luminescence (UCL) has been widely applied in bioimaging due to its low autofluorescence and high contrast. However, a relatively high power density is still needed in conventional UCL bioimaging. In the present study, an ultralow power density light, as low as 0.06 mW cm −2 , is applied as an excitation source for UCL bioimaging with PbS/CdS/ZnS quantum dots (UCL‐QDs) as probes. The speculated UCL mechanism is a phonon‐assisted single‐photon process, and the relative quantum yield is up to 4.6%. As determined by continuous irradiation with a 980 nm laser, the UCL‐QDs show excellent photostability. Furthermore, UCL‐QDs‐based probe is applied in tumor, blood vessel, and lymph node bioimaging excited with an eye‐safe low‐power light‐emitting diode light in a nude mouse with few heat effects.

Afterglow materials have drawn considerable attention due to their attractive luminescent properties. However, their low‐efficiency luminescence in aqueous environment limits their applications in life sciences. Here, we developed a molecular fusion strategy to improve the afterglow efficiency of photochemical afterglow materials. By fusing a cache unit with an emitter, we obtained a blue afterglow system with a quantum yield up to 2.59 %. This is 162 times higher than that achieved with the traditional physical mixing system and more than an order of magnitude larger than that of the covalent coupling system. High‐efficiency afterglow nanoparticles were obtained and utilized for bio‐imaging with a high signal‐to‐noise ratio (SNR) of 131, and for the lateral flow immunoassay (LFIA) of β‐hCG with a low limit of detection (LOD) of 0.34 mIU mL−1. This paves a new way for the construction of high‐efficiency afterglow materials and expands the number of luminescence reporter candidates for disease diagnosis and bio‐imaging.

Optical encryption with easy operation, multichannel and high security has been one of the most significant technologies for information security. Stimuli‐responsive luminescent materials have emerged as an ideal candidate for optical encryption, owing to its smart responsive property and high security. Herein, a type of light‐responsive multicolor luminescent materials for high‐security information encryption, which are fabricated by combining sensitizer, consumption unit, and emitter is developed. Different types of sensitizers to achieve different stimulus light responses, and multicolor light‐responsive luminescent can be obtained by varying the composition of perovskite nanocrystals emitter can be selected. Both stimulus light and emission color can be used as distinguishable encoding dimensions, which enable multiplexed encoding with high capacity and complexity. Importantly, the controllable consumption can be manipulated by varying the concentration of consumption unit, so the programmed information encoded in different channels can be selectively read and erased simultaneously by varying stimulus light. The method makes the encryption information highly resistive to brute force trial‐and‐error attacks, which achieves high security level of information protection.