A General Energy-Puzzle Strategy to Fabricate Efficient Metal–Organic Framework Scintillators for X-ray Detection

Metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) integrating heavy metals and emissive centers have shown great potential as scintillating materials. However, the nonluminescent nature of most MOFs hinders their potential as scintillators. Herein, we propose a general energy-puzzle strategy to convert nonluminous MOFs into efficient scintillators for X-ray detection. By doping a minute quantity of lanthanide (Ln) whose energy level matches that of the linker in the original MOF, the resulting Ln-doped MOF exhibited significantly enhanced X-ray excited luminescence (XEL) performance, boosting an extraordinary improvement exceeding 2 orders of magnitude in terms of limit of detection (LOD). Judicious selection of Ln-dopant with proper energy level enables broad applicability to generally improve the XEL performance of weakly or nonemissive MOFs, among which a rare X-ray-induced near-infrared scintillation was realized. This work broadens the material scope of MOF-based scintillators and facilitates the exploration of efficient MOF-based scintillators for potential radiation detection applications.