At the same time, the erbium ions form complexes with oxygen, which improves up-conversion efficiency. EDC NPs, with average diameter of 9 to 13 nm, may be employed in new applications in biomedicine, solar cell technology, and gas sensing, where
an optical nanomaterial that can emit via either up- or Selleck Dinaciclib down-conversion may be of value. Acknowledgement This work was funded partially by a NSF STTR Phase I grant with MW Photonics (award# 0930364). The authors would like to thank Dr. Michael Ellis and his assistant Eng. Jeremy Beach, both from the Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science (ICTAS), for their assistance with the furnace annealing of the PF299 nanoparticles in Dr. Ellis’ laboratory. Also, the authors are grateful to the financial support of the Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in Virginia Tech, Virginia Tech Middle East and North Africa (VT-MENA) program in Egypt, and Center of Advanced Materials (CAM) in Qatar University. The authors appreciate the technical support of Mr. Don Leber, manager of the Micron Technology Semiconductor Processing Laboratory at Virginia Tech. References 1. Chandra S, Das P, Bag S, Laha D, Pramanik P: Synthesis, functionalization
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