In this imaginative artwork, a lanthanide-doped nanoparticle takes the form of a spider and the web spun by the spider is made of 9-anthracenecarboxylic acid, an organic antenna designed to trap charge carriers and efficiently harvest elusive ‘dark’ molecular triplet excitons. Credit: Zhongzheng Yu Scientists have developed a surprising new way to power materials that normally cannot conduct electricity, opening the door to a new generation of ultra pure near infrared LEDs for medical imaging,