Highly efficient copper halide scintillators for high-performance and dynamic X-ray imaging

Quan Zhou; Jiwei Ren; Jiawen Xiao; Lin Lei; Feiyi Liao; Haipeng Di; Chao Wang; Lijun Yang; Qi Chen; Xiaofang Yang; Yiying Zhao; Xiaodong Han

doi:10.1039/d1nr03996b

Highly efficient copper halide scintillators for high-performance and dynamic X-ray imaging

Nanoscale. 2021 Dec 13;13(47):19894-19902. doi: 10.1039/d1nr03996b.

Authors

Quan Zhou^{1

2}, Jiwei Ren¹, Jiawen Xiao², Lin Lei¹, Feiyi Liao¹, Haipeng Di¹, Chao Wang², Lijun Yang¹, Qi Chen³, Xiaofang Yang⁴, Yiying Zhao¹, Xiaodong Han²

Affiliations

¹ Institute of Materials, China Academy of Engineering Physics, Jiangyou 621908, China. zhaoyiying@caep.cn.
² Institute of Microstructure and Property of Advanced Materials, Beijing Key Lab of Microstructure and Property of Advanced Materials, Faculty of Materials and Manufacturing, Beijing University of Technology, Beijing 100124, China. xiaojw@bjut.edu.cn.
³ School of Materials Science & Engineering, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China.
⁴ College of Materials Science and Engineering, Chongqing University, Chongqing 400044, China.

PMID: 34761770
DOI: 10.1039/d1nr03996b

Abstract

Progress towards high performance X-ray detection and dynamic imaging applications, including nondestructive inspection, homeland security, and medical diagnostics, requires scintillators with a high light yield, a reasonable decay time, low cost, and eco-friendliness. Recently, copper halide scintillators have drawn tremendous attention due to their outstanding radioluminescence performance. Here, we first employed β-Cs₃Cu₂Cl₅ as a high-performance scintillator, with a photoluminescence quantum yield (PLQY) of 94.6%, a radioluminescence light yield of 34 000 ± 4000 photons per MeV, a low detection limit of 81.7 nGy_air s^-1, and good operational stability under a total X-ray dose of 174.6 Gy_air in air. In addition, this scintillator presents a high spatial resolution of 9.6 lp mm^-1 at the modulation transfer function of 0.2 and a superb performance at 60 frames per second in our X-ray imaging system. Overall, this highly efficient scintillator demonstrates outstanding comprehensive performance and shows great potential for broad applications in X-ray detection and dynamic imaging.