Lanthanide-doped single dielectric nanoparticles have
been exploited
toward the realization of temperature sensing in the nanoscale with
high spatial, temporal, and thermal resolution. However, due to the
relatively small number of emitters when compared with suspensions
or powders, the luminescence readouts in individual nanocrystals usually
require higher excitation power densities to keep an acceptable signal-to-noise
ratio. Since in numerous cases these thermometers work by exploiting
upconversion excitation pathways, higher excitation powers can lead
to higher-order photon emissions that can overlap with the luminescent
bands used to perform the temperature measurements. This work shows
that the performance and the characterization of ∼400 nm Y2O3: Yb3+/Er3+ single-particle
thermometers vary depending on the excitation irradiance if higher-order
spectrally overlapping bands are not properly taken into account.
We apply a recently developed method to separate these bands based
on their different power-law, without the need for multiple wavelength
excitation, resulting in a correction procedure that reduces the temperature
readout uncertainty from 0.6 to 0.3 K in the specific case of the
thermometer investigated in this work. Additionally, power-excitation-related
thermal artifacts on the order of 10 °C were detected and corrected
with the presented method.