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

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.