High-resolution X-ray imaging via spatially decoupled heavy-atom antennas in organic scintillators.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 41714319.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-026-69795-1 and PMC identifier 13031387.
- 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
Organic scintillators are promising for X-ray imaging due to low cost, sustainability, and tunable structures, but their commercial use is limited by poor understanding of charge transfer design for balancing light yield, decay, and bandwidth. Here, we propose a spatially decoupled heavy atom antenna strategy, integrating alkyl bromides into a hybridized local and charge-transfer scaffold to create a scintillator. This architecture leverages the moderate charge-transfer state to deliver an optimal combination of a short radiative lifetime (3.74 ns), a narrow radioluminescence bandwidth (56 nm), a large Stokes shift (110 nm) and a high photoluminescence quantum yield of 100%. As a result, this scintillator exhibits excellent radioluminescence properties, rendering it suitable for highly sensitive X-ray detections. In this work, we elucidate a general design principle for creating high-performance scintillators that meet the stringent multi-property demands of advanced X-ray imaging applications.