A team of researchers led by Professors Hong Zhang (photonic nanochemistry) and Evert Jan Meijer (computational chemistry) of the University of Amsterdam’s Van ‘t Hoff Institute for Molecular Sciences has significantly improved the fundamental understanding of photon upconversion in nanoparticles. Through the collaborative approach of advanced spectroscopy and theoretical modelling they were able to establish that the migration of excitation energy greatly affects the upconversion dynamics. In a recent publication in Angewandte Chemie, the researchers describe how ‘dopant ions spatially separated’ (DISS) nanostructures can be used for tailoring the upconversion dynamics.