ChatRadiation detection crystals historically suffered from sluggish response times and dim light yields; hybrid divalent europium-bromide scintillators achieve ultra-bright, picosecond radiation-to-light conversion through optimized 5d-4f bandgap transitions.
Scintillators are the crucial materials inside medical PET scanners, airport security portals, and nuclear radiation detectors that absorb high-energy gamma rays and convert them into visible light pulses for digital sensors.
Traditional scintillators forced an unwanted trade-off: high light output materials were slow and hygroscopic (decaying upon exposure to air), while fast materials were too dim to detect faint radiation sources accurately.
This breakthrough reports a new class of hybrid zero-dimensional europium(II)-bromide scintillators that harness efficient electronic transitions. The crystal architecture achieves an extraordinary light yield of over eighty thousand photons per MeV with sub-nanosecond decay times and exceptional ambient air stability.
These ultra-sensitive hybrid scintillators promise to revolutionize low-dose clinical radiation tomography, homeland nuclear material interdiction, and deep-space cosmic ray spectroscopy.
Hybrid Eu(II)-bromide scintillators with efficient 5d-4f bandgap transition for X-ray imaging
Luminescent metal halides are attracting growing attention as scintillators for X-ray imaging in safety inspection, medical diagnosis, etc. Here we present brand-new hybrid Eu(II)-bromide scintillators, 1D type [Et4N]EuBr3·MeOH and 0D type [Me4N]6Eu5Br16·MeOH, with spin-allowed 5d-4f bandgap transition emission toward simplified carrier transport during scintillation process. The 1D/0D structures with edge/face -sharing [EuBr6]4− octahedra further contribute to lowing bandgaps and enhancing quantum confinement effect, enabling efficient scintillation performance (light yield ~73100 ± 800 Ph MeV−1, detect limit ~18.6 nGy s−1, X-ray afterglow ~ 1% @ 9.6 μs). We demonstrate the X-ray imaging with 27.3 lp mm−1 resolution by embedding Eu(II)-based scintillators into AAO film. Our results create the new family of low-dimensional rare-earth-based halides for scintillation and related optoelectronic applications.
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