Application for medical x ray facility

Dandan Yang, * a Ling Li, a Shijia Liu, a Xudong Hu, b Xuebin Zhang, a Zhiheng Xu,* c Shiying Guo, d Bing Wang, e Xiaobin Tang, c Zhuang Chen, d Xiaoming Li, * b Qin Xu * a and Haibo Zeng ab

a Institute of Innovation Materials and Energy, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Yangzhou University, Yangzhou, China
E-mail: dandanyang@yzu.edu.cn

b MIIT Key Laboratory of Advanced Display Materials and Devices, Institute of Optoelectronics & Nanomaterials, College of Materials Science and Engineering, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing, China

c Department of Nuclear Science and Technology, Key Laboratory of Nuclear Technology Application and Radiation Protection in Astronautics, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing, China

d College of Physics Science and Technology, Yangzhou University, Yangzhou, China

e Hubei University of Automotive Technology, Shiyan, China

Abstract

Metal halide scintillators have received extensive attention for their application in medical and industrial fields. However, it is extremely difficult for most reported scintillators to achieve the optimal balance among X-ray absorption capability, exciton utilization efficiency, and photoluminescence quantum yield. Here we introduce heavy atoms (Hf) with a similar ionic radius into the Cs₂ZrCl₆ structure to synthesize a vacancy-ordered double perovskite Cs₂ZrCl₆:Hf scintillator. Interestingly, the scintillator with a lower energy gap E_a1 and smaller ΔE_(S1–T1) exhibits an energy transfer from the triplet state to the singlet state under X-ray radiation, realizing the effective utilization of triplet excitons. Meanwhile, an abnormal long decay lifetime and a higher thermal activation energy (E_a2) of the scintillator are obtained as the temperature rises, indicating that the nonradiative recombination can be suppressed. As a result, a high photoluminescence quantum yield of 93% combined with strong X-ray absorption capability enables a record high light yield of 57 000 photons per MeV. More importantly, it has a low detection limit of 338.08 nGy_air s −1 and a spatial resolution of 14.7 lp mm −1 , as well as good irradiation stability. Such an excellent scintillation performance and good irradiation stability lay a good foundation for efficient X-ray imaging.