Lanthanide-containing persistent luminescence materials are promising candidates for a wide range of applications by virtue of splendid superiorities in afterglow performance.However,it is a crucial challenge to achieve high-quality afterglow materials at the attractive nanoscale,with uniform size,controllable morphology,and satisfying brightness.Herein,a bottom-up approach was developed to construct the high-quality afterglow nanoparticles,incorporating luminescent lanthanide complex and organic molecular ingredients under mild conditions.These nanoparticles exhibited intrinsic lanthanide luminescence with superbright red afterglow (> 10 cd m-2) in a homogeneous solution.The afterglow solution with excellent processability can serve as ideal building blocks for the on-demand fabrication of functional nanomaterials.Water-dispersible afterglow nanoparticles with state-of-the-art high brightness were uniformly constructed to perform whole-blood lateral flow assay of procalcitonin with a naked-eye detection limit of 0.5 ng mL-1,promoting the point-of-care testing development.