Rare Earth Hydroxide as a Precursor for Controlled Fabrication of Uniform β-NaYF4 Nanoparticles: A Novel, Low Cost, and Facile Method

In recent years, rare earth doped upconversion nanocrystals have been widely used in different fields owing to their unique merits. Although rare earth chlorides and trifluoroacetates are commonly used precursors for the synthesis of nanocrystals, they have certain disadvantages. For example, rare earth chlorides are expensive and rare earth trifluoroacetates produce toxic gases during the reaction. To overcome these drawbacks, we use the less expensive rare earth hydroxide as a precursor to synthesize β-NaYF4 nanoparticles with multiform shapes and sizes. Small-sized nanocrystals (15 nm) can be obtained by precisely controlling the synthesis conditions. Compared with the previous methods, the current method is more facile and has lower cost. In addition, the defects of the nanocrystal surface are reduced through constructing core–shell structures, resulting in enhanced upconversion luminescence intensity.