In recent years, Upconversion (UC) materials have attracted much attention because of them fantastic capability of converting the low-energy photons into high-energy photons. Among these materials, the Lanthanide-doped inorganic phosphors have shown remarkable potential for Upconvertion visible to UV (from A to C). For example in Health area, it could be expected that the Visible-to-UV UC materials could open a new window for promoting visible-light-driven photo-antibiosis and photo-sterilization to prevent disease transfer in hospitals, the food industry. On the other hand, new researches also have indicated the huge potentials of these compounds in photo-catalysis fields.  For example, Ti based photocatalysts (like TiO₂) are very active catalysts, but mainly respond to UV irradiation, so they could not make full use of the whole solar spectrum. For instance, current research of visible-light-driven water splitting is highly limited due to absence of efficient and chemically stable photo-catalysts. The application of visible-to-UV UC material can effectively sensitize UV-responsive photocatalysts to promote visible-light driven water splitting.

Our work will be focued on enhancing visible light photocatalytic activity of catalysts like TiO2 by shifting energy gap from Visible to UVA using Up-conversion Lanthanide-doped ions. Our challenges in this research field is preparing such materials both from theoretical to commercial perspective.