Lanthanide phosphorescence

The key advantage that lanthanide labels have over other types of fluorescent labels is that time resolved techniques can be employed, allowing fluorescence from the surrounding biological medium to dissipate before detection of the long lived lanthanide phosphorescence. The safety advantages they have over radioactive labels are clear. 

Keywords Autofluorescence Decay time Delayed fluorescence Fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy Lanthanides Phosphorescence Time-correlated single photon counting Time-resolved fluorescence microscopy... 

There is no reason why the same principle cannot be applied for light-emitting polymers as host materials to pave a way to high-efficiency solution-processible LEDs. In fact, polymer-based electrophosphorescent LEDs (PPLEDs) based on polymer fluorescent hosts and lanthanide organic complexes have been reported only a year after the phosphorescent OLED was reported [8]. In spite of a relatively limited research activity in PPLEDs, as compared with phosphorescent OLEDs, it is hoped that 100% internal quantum efficiency can also be achieved for polymer LEDs. In this chapter, we will give a brief description of the photophysics beyond the operation of electrophosphorescent devices, followed by the examples of the materials, devices, and processes, experimentally studied in the field till the beginning of 2005. 

The nature of the emission by these three lanthanide ions is phosphorescence, since the emission of light is accompanied by a change in spin multiplicity. For example, the emission by the Eu3+ cation involves a change in the spin multiplicity from 5 to 7 on going from the excited state to the ground state (5Eu —> 7Eu). 

Fig. 8 Energy level diagrams for the dansyl units of dendrimer 11 and the investigated lanthanide ions. The position of the triplet excited state of 11 is uncertain because no phosphorescence can he observed...

The basis for the claim of discovery of an element has varied over the centuries. The method of discovery of the chemical elements in the late eightenth and the early nineteenth centuries used the properties of the new sustances, their separability, the colors of their compounds, the shapes of their crystals and their reactivity to determine the existence of new elements. In those early days, atomic weight values were not available, and there was no spectral analysis that would later be supplied by arc, spark, absorption, phosphorescent or x-ray spectra. Also in those days, there were many claims, e.g., the discovery of certain rare earth elements of the lanthanide series, which involved the discovery of a mineral ore, from which an element was later extracted. The honor of discovery has often been accorded not to the person who first isolated the element but to the person who discovered the original mineral itself, even when the ore was impure and that ore actually contained many elements. The reason for this is that in the case of these rare earth elements, the earth now refers to oxides of a metal not to the metal itself This fact was not realized at the time of their discovery, until the English chemist Humphry Davy showed that earths were compounds of oxygen and metals in 1808. 

Fig. 25. (A) DELFIA (Dissociation Enhanced Lanthanide Fluoro-ImmunoAssay) system. This heterogeneous immunoassay system uses a primary antibody bound to a solid support, to which a variable amount of unlabeled antigen is bound. The secondary antibody is labeled with a non-phospho-rescent lanthanide chelate, which becomes phosphorescent after dissociation from the antibody, due to the addition of an enhancement solution [which typically contains a mixture of sensitizer (typically a (1-diketonate) and micelle inducing surfactant (5). (B) Heterogeneous fluoroimmunoassay using a secondary antibody directly labeled with a phosphorescent lanthanide chelate.

Mn", 5 = f (very weak phosphorescence)]. The lanthanides and actinides (5 / 0) belong to this type. 

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