This work deals with the elaboration of luminescent nanoparticles based on organolanthanides forbioimaging and optical coding. The organolanthanides were embedded without covalent linking inorder to preserve their remarkable luminescent properties and chemical stability. Two differenttypes of nanoparticles have been studied: polymer latexes and silica particles that were bothsynthesized in dispersed media.The silica nanoparticles were synthesized by a reverse microemulsion-mediated sol-gel process. Twoluminescent lanthanide chelates originally dissolved into water droplets were physically trapped intothe amorphous silica during its formation. A novel method based on a radioactive Eu(III) probe hasbeen developed to study the incorporation process. The physicochemical properties of the differentchelates had a strong influence on their localization within the particles and on the measuredincorporation efficiencies. This study finally allowed us to investigate the effect of Gd(III) complexesconfinement into silica nanoparticles.Luminescent polymer latexes based on organolanthanides have been synthesized by miniemulsionpolymerization. Several organolanthanides exhibiting a ionic structure or a non-ionic structure havebeen efficiently embedded into latex particles by simple dissolution in the corresponding monomers.For the ionic lanthanide chelate, a cationic surfactant was used to maintain the organolanthanidecomplex inside the droplets and guaranty and efficient incorporation. The resulting polymericluminescent nanoparticles showed excellent stability over leakage and a high loading capacity. Thisparticular ligand is able to efficiently sensitize over ten luminescent lanthanides, emitting in thevisible, the NIR or both regions. This allowed us to generate a large variety of color codes based onluminescence by tuning the emission signal using several lanthanide ions.
