Lanthanide Luminescence for Biomedical Analyses and Imaging

Abstract

Jean-Claude Bu ¨nzli is an active researcher in the field of co-ordination, supramolecular, and biological chemistry of the lanthanide ions. He earned a degree in chemical engineering in 1968 and a Ph.D. in 1971 from the E ´cole Polytechnique Fe ´de ´rale de Lausanne (EPFL). He spent two years at the University of British Columbia (Canada) and one year at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zu ¨rich before being appointed at the University of Lausanne in 1974 and at EPFL in 2001 as a full professor of inorganic chemistry.

Exceptional Oxygen Sensing Properties of New Blue Light‐Excitable Highly Luminescent Europium(III) and Gadolinium(III) Complexes

“…Europium(III) complexes represent a particularly interesting group of luminescent compounds which are distinguished by their very large Stokes shifts, long luminescence decay times (hundreds of µs -few ms) and very narrow emission bands. [22] These complexes are widely applied as labels in various luminescence assays both as free dyes bearing a functional group for conjugation and in the form of dye-doped nanoparticles, [22,23] but application in optical sensors and analyte-sensitive probes is comparably rare. [24][25][26][27] For example, luminescent Eu(III) complexes were applied as optical temperature probes, [27][28][29][30][31] pH indicators, [32][33][34][35][36] fluoroionophores for bicarbonate, [37,38] citrate [39] and lactate [40] and as hydrogen peroxide [41] and nitrogen monooxide probes.…”

Sensing Uranyl(VI) Ions by Coordination and Energy Transfer to a Luminescent Europium(III) Complex

“…In the absence of UO 2 2+ , the emission spectrum of [EuL] upon ligand excitation (280 nm) is typical of Eu 3+ emission with the narrow emission bands corresponding to the 5 D 0 → 7 F J transitions (578, 595, 613, 654 and 702 nm for J =0 to 4, respectively) 7, 8. Addition of uranyl(VI) nitrate (0–2 equivalents) at pH 7.4 led to a decrease of the overall Eu 3+ emission intensity observed upon ligand‐centered excitation at 280 nm (Figure 1).…”

“…Despite their widespread use as cation sensors, through both luminescence8, 18 and/or magnetic resonance responses,19 to the best of our knowledge there have been no reports of a molecular lanthanide long‐lived emissive complex that is responsive to UO 2 2+ . This example adds to the scope of recent examples of energy transfer in molecular lanthanide(III) complexes,20 expanding applications into lanthanide–actinide interactions.…”

Recent Advances on Functionalized Upconversion Nanoparticles for Detection of Small Molecules and Ions in Biosystems

“…Among all sensing technologies, photon‐signal‐based biosensors such as organic dyes,1, 2, 3, 4 metal complexes,5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and semiconductor nanocrystals11 are the most commonly used ones. However, these probes have several limitations in detection or sensing.…”