Near infrared light can penetrate deep into biological tissue, which, therefore, holds promise for remote activation of some particular processes that is far below the skin.1 However, light-mediated photochemical reactions generally require the use of ultraviolet (UV) or visible light to be initialized. Photon upconversion in rare-earth ions is a step-wise multiphoton process that can efficiently convert two or more NIR photons to produce anti-Stokes emission of a higher energy photon (e.g., NIR, visible, UV) using an inexpensive, low power continuous-wave (cw) diode laser excitation.1,2 Using colloidal nanochemistry to nanocontrol of the interfacial processes and excitation dynamics, we show that we are able to produce efficient and selective, visible and UV upconversion emissions in especially engineered upconversion nanoparticles. In particular, utilizing NIR-to-UV upconversion nanoparticles as a UV �nanolamp�, we are able to activate non-fluorescent caged fluorescein to a fluorescent state inside live cells, displaying their applicability for remote biocompatible photoactivation.Keywords : Photon Upconversion, Remote Activation, Near Infrared1P. N. Prasad, �Introduction to Nanomedcine and Nanobioengineering�, Wiley, New Jersey (2012)2P. N. Prasad, �Nanophotonics�, Wiley, New Jersey (2004)

Remote activation of photochemical processes in live cells using colloidal near-infrared-to-ultraviolet nano up-converters

245th National Meeting (2013)

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