Welcome to PRE'26

PRE’26 is the eleventh event in the series of International Workshops covering a wide range of research topics concerning the properties and applications of rare-earth ions in optoelectronics and photonics. The series begun in Trento, Italy in May 2005 (PRE’05), followed by PRE’07 again in Trento, PRE’10 in Firenze (Italy), PRE’12 in Kyoto (Japan), PRE’14 in San Sebastián (Spain), PRE’16 in Greenville (USA), PRE’17 in Rome (Italy), PRE’19 in Nice (France), PRE’22 (double event, in Mexico in Poland), PRE’24 in Trento (Italy). More details are available in the History page.

More than 1,100 scientists and students from over 30 countries, in total, have attended the previous Workshops. The average size of each event, around 100 people, makes for a collegial environment where students and world experts can mingle and talk in an informal and effective way.

Over the past decades, an increasing number of luminescent materials have been reported, based on the properties of rare earth ions embedded in different matrices (crystalline, amorphous and glass ceramics; oxides, fluorides, chalcogenides, organics, ….) or contained in molecular complexes. These materials have already been widely employed in light sources and amplifiers, optical displays, fluorescent probes, luminescent labels, frequency converters, detectors, and so on, covering fields ranging from telecommunication to sensing, from medical diagnosis to energy. Despite of it, there is still an increasing demand for novel functions to further extend practical applications.
Like the previous ones, PRE’26 aims at providing to material scientists, chemists and physicists the opportunity of debating about the state of the art and the perspectives of the photonic materials based on rare earth ions. Contributions on both fundamental photoluminescence properties and application-oriented material investigations are welcome.

After PRE’12 in Japan, a PRE Workshop goes again to Asia, in the city of Hangzhou, the capital of China’s Zhejiang province. Populated by near to 12 million people, Hangzhou is home to the headquarters of large global tech companies and to several notable Universities. It ranks 16th globally by scientific outputs according to the Nature Index 2023 Science Cities. Moreover, it ranks 14th in the 2023  Global Innovation Index.

Hangzhou is a very old city, too; the Qiantang County was established by Emperor Qin Shi Huang in 222 BC. One of Hangzhou's most popular sights is West Lake, a UNESCO World Heritage Site; that area includes some of Hangzhou's most notable historic and scenic places.

It will be in such a background, mixing history and high technology, that PRE’26 will be held. We invite experts, early-career researchers and PhD students to participate in PRE’26 and contribute to its success.

We look forward to greet you in Hangzhou in March 2026!