Projects
Recovery of scandium, yttrium and lanthanides from bauxite residue using solvent extraction with ionic liquids. KU Leuven
Secondary resources are essential to maintain the supply of critical metals in our fast-developing society. Recovery of metals from waste materials is not only important to meet the increasing demand, but also in view of a sustainable future for our planet. The rare-earth elements are listed as critical metals by the European Commission because of their essential role in, amongst others, permanent magnets for many high-tech and green ...
Hybrid lanthanide polyoxotungstate core/shell nanoparticles for fluorescence-based bioimaging Ghent University
Fluorescence bioimaging is a powerful tool in early stage diagnosis of diseases such as cancer or cardiovascular problems. Lanthanide ions have unique properties, which make them suitable for designing fluorescence bioimaging probes. Up until now mostly lanthanides, which emit in a region visible to the human eye, have been explored for this purpose. Creating lanthanide based bioimaging probes, which emit in the near-infrared (NIR) region of ...
Dye-sensitized up/down conversion in lanthanide nano materials Ghent University
Inorganic lanthanide-doped nano particles decorated with organic dyes will be synthesized and optimized towards up and down conversion, to obtain state-of-the-art materials that will enable wavelength conversion of parts of the solar spectrum, in order to increase the efficiency in photovoltaic technology. Making use of lanthanide coordination chemistry, highly efficient as well as stable luminescent nano materials will be developed
Synthesis and characterization of amphiphilic lanthanide chelates as potential contrast agents for bimodal MRI and optical imaging KU Leuven
The powerful in vivo technique of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is ubiquitous in clinical diagnostics and optical imaging is becoming an emerging technique of interest. Each imaging technique has its own strengths and weaknesses, the combination of different, complementary techniques can overcome inherent limitations that are associated with one individual technique. Whereas MRI is ideal for whole body images due to its good spatial ...
Lanthanide doped silica nanoparticles for bioimaging via two photon excitation KU Leuven
Insight into the reactivity and molecular interactions between lanthanide containing polyoxometalatesand proteins. KU Leuven
Selective hydrolysis of amide bonds in proteins is one of the most important procedures in analytical biochemistry, biotechnology and modern proteomics. However, the extreme kinetic inertness of the peptide bond, with a half-life estimated between 250 and 600 years under physiological conditions, makes this a challenging task. Our preliminary studies have also shown that in addition to the selective hydrolysis of hen egg white lysozyme by ...
Lanthanide containing polyoxometalate complexes as regioselective reagents for protein cleavage. KU Leuven
Optical spectroscopy of rare-earth (lanthanide) ions doped iparent nano-glass-ceramics with application to plasmonic and meta-materio-structures. KU Leuven
Development of lanthanide-doped quantum dots for biosensing applications Ghent University
Trivalent lanthanides will be built into semiconducting nanocrystals (quantum dots) to circumvent the disadvantages of both systems and to obtain easily excitable materials (large light absorptivity), ideal for biosensing due to the large difference in excitation and emission wavelength and the difference in luminescence lifetime of the lanthanide-doped quantum dot and the tissue, in which sensing will occur.