The oldest versions of the "Luminescent Lanthanides Homepage" date back to November 1996. The project was inspired by the "Single Molecule Spectroscopy homepage" at ETH-Zürich (Switzerland). Initially, it was hosted on the orgwww.chem.uva.nl server (a Silicon Graphics machine) at the Organic Chemistry laboratory of the University of Amsterdam. When this server broke down, the Luminescent Lanthanide Homepage was moved to a server in France (somewhere in 2002). The pages changed servers again in April 2006 and in February 2009, and are now at the server of the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Rennes.
Lanthanide luminescence was one of the topics studied in the Organic Photonic Materials Group led by Jan W. Verhoeven at the University of Amsterdam. The research focused on energy transfer from organic chromophores to rare-earth ions which photosensitizes their luminescence. Development of new materials based on these fascinating photophysics took place in cooperation with various research groups from other universities and from industry.
The Luminescent Lanthanides Homepage was maintained by Dr. M.H.V. Werts (now a CNRS research fellow at ENS Rennes, France).
Last update: February 2009