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Recent developments in the fi eld of biophotonics facilitate the raise of interest to inorganic nanoparticles (NPs) doped with Nd 3+ ions, because of their near-infrared (NIR) absorption. These NPs are interesting bioimaging probes for deep tissue visualization, while they can also act as local thermometers in biological tissues. Despite the good possibilities for visualization of NPs with Nd 3+ ions in NIR spectral range, diffi culties arise when studying the cellular uptake of these NPs using commercially available fl uorescence microscopy systems, since the selection of suitable luminescence detectors is limited. However, Nd 3+ ions are able to convert NIR radiation into visible light, showing upconversion properties. In this paper we found optimal parameters to excite upconversion luminescence of Nd 3+ :LaF 3 NPs in living cells and to compare the distribution of the NPs inside the cell culture of human macrophages THP-1 obtained by two methods. Firstly, by detecting the upconversion luminescence of the NPs in VIS under NIR multiphoton excitation using laser scanning confocal microscopy and secondly, using transmission electron microscopy.

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BACKGROUND Propane dehydrogenation is an alternative way both to produce propylene and to utilize CO2. Because of the high oxygen mobility in cerium‐zirconium oxide (CexZr1‐xO2), it looks promising as a support for the chromium oxide catalysts of propane dehydrogenation with CO2. Supports of CexZr1‐xO2 on mesoporous silica were synthesized in this work to combine the high oxygen mobility of the former and the pore structure of the latter. RESULTS Two applied synthetic approaches resulted in materials with different structure and properties. The wet impregnated catalysts demonstrated a higher activity and selectivity to propylene. At the same time, they had larger pore size distribution maxima (~9 nm) than the samples prepared by the introduction of metals simultaneously with Si‐precursor hydrolysis (~2 nm). For the chromium catalysts with the same support, the catalytic activity decreased with varying chromium loading as follows: 5% Cr > 3% Cr ≈ 7% Cr. For the catalysts with different CexZr1‐xO2 supports and equal chromium loading, the activity decreased with x changing as follows: 0.5 > 0.6 > 0.8 for the samples prepared by wet impregnation, and 0.8 ≈ 0.6 > 0.5 for the other synthetic path. CONCLUSIONS Catalysts were tested in oxidative dehydrogenation of propane with CO2. The wet impregnation approach turned out to be much more promising in terms of catalytic activity and selectivity to propylene in the reaction of propane dehydrogenation with CO2. The selectivity achieved was ≤80% at a 40% conversion. © 2023 Society of Chemical Industry (SCI).