Photon avalanche in MOFs: exploiting generated hot electrons for photocatalysis

Upconversion is an Anti-Stokes process that converts two or more lower-energy photons into a higher-energy emitted photon, with applications ranging from bioimaging to advanced photonics. Among the various upconversion mechanisms, photon avalanche (PA) is a highly nonlinear process, where a small excitation triggers an abrupt increase in emission once a critical threshold is reached. Conventionally, PA occurs in lanthanide-doped inorganic matrices through cross-relaxation within the lanthanide manifold, resulting in narrowband emission. While PA has been primarily explored for optical applications, its unique excited-state dynamics may also be harnessed to promote near- infrared photoredox catalysis. In this work, we investigate whether lanthanide-based MOFs exhibiting photon avalanche can exploit these excited states to drive photocatalytic reactions under 980 nm irradiation.