Water-dispersible X-ray scintillators enabling coating and blending with polymer materials for multiple applications.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 38448434.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-024-46287-8 and PMC identifier 10917805.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Developing X-ray scintillators that are water-dispersible, compatible with polymeric matrices, and processable to flexible substrates is an important challenge. Herein, Tb<sup>3+</sup>-doped Na<sub>5</sub>Lu<sub>9</sub>F<sub>32</sub> is introduced as an X-ray scintillating material with steady-state X-ray light yields of 15,800 photons MeV<sup>-1</sup>, which is generated as nanocrystals on halloysite nanotubes. The obtained product exhibits good water-dispersibility and highly sensitive luminescence to X-rays. It is deposited onto a polyurethane foam to afford a composite foam material with dose-dependent radioluminescence. Moreover, the product is dispersed into polymer matrixes in aqueous solution to prepare rigid or flexible scintillator screen for X-ray imaging. As a third example, it is incorporated multilayer hydrogels for information camouflage and multilevel encryption. Encrypted information can be recognized only by X-ray irradiation, while the false information is read out under UV light. Altogether, we demonstrate that the water-dispersible scintillators are highly promising for aqueous processing of radioluminescent, X-ray imaging, and information encrypting materials.