Amorphous Zero-Dimensional Organic Metal Halide Hybrid Scintillators with High Light Yield and Fast Response

Abstract

Zero-dimensional (0D) organic metal halide hybrids (OMHHs) have recently emerged as a promising class of scintillation materials, offering advantages in performance, tunability, environmental friendliness, and cost-effectiveness. While numerous 0D OMHH scintillators have been developed to date, most of them rely on radioluminescence (RL) originating from metal halide species with long decay lifetimes and are typically prepared as small-sized single crystals via a slow solution growth process. Here, we report for the first time high-performance X-ray scintillators based on facile, solution-processed amorphous 0D OMHH films that exhibit efficient RL with short decay lifetimes enabled by molecular sensitization. By reacting a rationally designed green-emitting organic halide, (4-(9,9-dimethylacridin-10(9H)-yl)phenyl)triphenylphosphonium bromide (DMAC-TPPBr), with zinc bromide (ZnBr2), we have obtained amorphous 0D (DMAC-TPP)2ZnBr4 films that exhibit outstanding optical and scintillation properties, with a high photoluminescence quantum yield of ∼85%, a short photoluminescence decay lifetime (∼12.5 ns), a high absolute light yield of ∼27,000 photons MeV−1, a radioluminescence decay lifetime of ∼8.00 ns, and a low limit of detection (LOD) of ∼9.00 nGyair s−1. By leveraging the benefits of solution-processed amorphous OMHHs with molecular sensitization, our approach paves a new pathway toward scalable, low-cost, and fast-response X-ray scintillators.