Owing to the unique luminescence phenomenon and the super long afterglow life, the persistent luminescence nanomaterials (PLNPs) can achieve in vitro excitation and the spectral emission regions can be regulated into the “biological transparent window”, which were widely used in optics sensor detection and bioimaging field of disease targeted diagnosis and treatment. In recent years, the syntheses and applications of PLNPs nanoprobe have attracted great attention in the areas of spectroscopy, photonics, photochemistry and materials science. This paper reviews the synthesis methods and surface modification of PLNPs molecular nanoprobe as well as their application in detection and bioimaging in vivo and in vitro. This paper focused on Mn²⁺ and Cr³⁺ doped nanostructures, particularly gallogermanates which are able to give intense red-near infrared persistent emission with a longer afterglow lifetime for more than two weeks and therefore are suitable for bioimaging application. The functionalized red-near infrared persistent luminescence nanomaterials provide a promising technology platform for long-term real-time detection of physiological processes and disease diagnosis in vivo. Finally, the challenges of PLNPs are described.

Contents
1 Introduction
2 Synthesis methods of PLNPs
2.1 Solid-State reaction
2.2 Sol-Gel method
2.3 Hydrothermal method
2.4 Co-Precipitation
2.5 Template method
2.6 Combustion method
2.7 Other methods
3 Application of PLNPs Nanoprobes in biomedicine
3.1 PLNPs based Biosensing and detection
3.2 PLNPs based Bioimaging
3.3 Multimodal Imaging of PLNPs
4 Conclusion and outlook