A method that has proven succesful in locating the energy levels of divalent and trivalent lanthanide ions (Ce, Pr,..., Eu,...Yb, Lu) in wide band gap inorganic compounds like YPO4 and CaF2 is applied to locate lanthanide levels in the wideband semiconductors GaN, AlN, their solid solutions AlxGa1-xN, and ZnO. The proposed schemes provide a description of relevant optical and luminescence prope...

Most lanthanide porphyrin derivatives exhibit ‘normal’ absorption spectra with Q and B bands. The rare earth ions have little effect on the absorption spectra, which are much like those of other closed-shell metalloporphyrins. However, their emission spectra vary according to which lanthanide ion is present. We observe two types of emissions: (i) a line emission arising from the lanthanide ion ...

Lanthanide-doped nanoparticles exhibit unique optical properties, such as a long luminescence lifetime (up to several milliseconds), sharp emission peaks, and upconversion luminescence over the range of wavelengths from near-infrared to visible. Exploiting these optical properties, lanthanide-doped nanoparticles have been widely utilized for cellular and small animal imaging with the absence of...

Molecules containing multiple lanthanide ions have unique potential in applications for medical imaging including the areas of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and fluoresence imaging. The study of multilanthanide complexes as contrast agents for MRI and as biologically responsive fluorescent probes has resulted in an improved understanding of the structural characteristics that govern the beha...

Following removal of most of the telopeptide regions with pepsin, bovine dermal collagen gelled more slowly to form fibrils with a weak banding pattern. The reduction in gelling rate reflected an increase in the length of the nucleation phase and a lower rate of turbidity increase during the growth phase; the activation energy of both phases was increased. Lanthanide ions, phosphate, or, to a l...

Electrospray ionization (ESI) on mixtures of acidic fibrinopeptide B and two peptide analogs with trivalent lanthanide salts generates [M + Met + H](4+), [M + Met](3+), and [M + Met -H](2+), where M = peptide and Met = metal (except radioactive promethium). These ions undergo extensive and highly efficient electron transfer dissociation (ETD) to form metallated and non-metallated c- and z-ions....

Lanthanide-doped nanoparticles exhibit unique luminescent properties, including large Stokes shift, sharp emission bandwidth, high resistance to optical blinking, and photobleaching, as well as the unique ability to convert long-wavelength stimulation into short-wavelength emission. These attributes are particularly needed for developing luminescent labels as alternatives to organic fluorophore...

In the design of molecular sensors, researchers exploit binding interactions that are usually defined in terms of topology and charge complementarity. The formation of complementary arrays of highly cooperative, noncovalent bonding networks facilitates protein-ligand binding, leading to motifs such as the "lock-and-key". Synthetic molecular sensors often employ metal complexes as key design ele...

We have devised a molecular-to-micellar strategy to incorporate lanthanide nanoplatform for the delivery of an anticancer drug that simultaneously offers hybrid near-infrared (NIR) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) capabilities with defined lanthanide(III) ratio control. This cancer-selective lanthanide-based self-assembled nanocomposite (LnNPs) has been synthesized by conjugating lanthanide...

The sensitive and specific detection of analytes such as proteins in biological samples is critical for a variety of applications, for example disease diagnosis. In immunoassays a signal in response to the concentration of analyte present is generated by use of antibodies labeled with radioisotopes, luminophores, or enzymes. All immunoassays suffer to some extent from the problem of the backgro...