Highly Luminescent Zero-Dimensional Organic Copper Halides for X-ray Scintillation

Linyuan Lian; Xi Wang; Peng Zhang; Jinsong Zhu; Xiuwen Zhang; Jianbo Gao; Song Wang; Guijie Liang; Daoli Zhang; Liang Gao; Haisheng Song; Rong Chen; Xinzheng Lan; Wenxi Liang; Guangda Niu; Jiang Tang; Jianbing Zhang

doi:10.1021/acs.jpclett.1c01946

Highly Luminescent Zero-Dimensional Organic Copper Halides for X-ray Scintillation

J Phys Chem Lett. 2021 Jul 29;12(29):6919-6926. doi: 10.1021/acs.jpclett.1c01946. Epub 2021 Jul 20.

Authors

Linyuan Lian¹, Xi Wang², Peng Zhang³, Jinsong Zhu², Xiuwen Zhang³, Jianbo Gao⁴, Song Wang⁵, Guijie Liang⁵, Daoli Zhang^{1

2}, Liang Gao², Haisheng Song², Rong Chen⁶, Xinzheng Lan^{1

2}, Wenxi Liang², Guangda Niu², Jiang Tang², Jianbing Zhang^{1

2

7}

Affiliations

¹ School of Optical and Electronic Information, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, Hubei 430074, China.
² Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, Hubei 430074, China.
³ College of Physics and Optoelectronic Engineering, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, Guangdong 518060, China.
⁴ Department of Physics and Astronomy, Clemson University, Clemson, South Carolina 29634, United States.
⁵ Hubei Key Laboratory of Low Dimensional Optoelectronic Materials and Devices, Hubei University of Arts and Science, Xiangyang, Hubei 441053, China.
⁶ State Key Laboratory of Digital Manufacturing Equipment and Technology, School of Mechanical Science and Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, Hubei 430074, China.
⁷ Shenzhen Huazhong University of Science and Technology Research Institute, Shenzhen, Guangdong 518057, China.

PMID: 34282920
DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpclett.1c01946

Abstract

The present work reports highly efficient flexible and reabsorption-free scintillators based on two zero-dimensional (0D) organic copper halides (TBA)CuX₂ (TBA = tetrabutylammonium cation; X = Cl, Br). The (TBA)CuX₂ exhibit highly luminescent green and sky-blue emissions peaked at 510 and 498 nm, with large Stokes shifts of 224 and 209 nm and high photoluminescence quantum yields (PLQYs) of 92.8% and 80.5% at room temperature for (TBA)CuCl₂ and (TBA)CuBr₂ single crystals (SCs), respectively. Interestingly, above room temperature, their PLQYs increase with temperature and reach near unity at 320 and 345 K for (TBA)CuCl₂ and (TBA)CuBr₂, respectively. The excellent properties originate from self-trapped excitons (STEs) in individual [CuX₂]^- quantum rods, which is demonstrated by the temperature-dependent PL, ultrafast transient absorption (TA) combined with density functional theory (DFT) calculations. The (TBA)CuX₂ scintillators show bright radioluminescence (RL), impressive linear response to dose rate in a broad range, and high light yields. Their potential application in X-ray imaging is demonstrated by using (TBA)CuX₂ composite scintillation screens. Importantly, flexible scintillators are demonstrated to be superior than flat ones for imaging nonplanar objects by conformally coating, which produce accurate images with negligible distortion.