Organo-Metal Halide Scintillator with Weak Thermal Quenching Up to 200 °C

The prominent thermal quenching (TQ) effect of organic-inorganic metal halides limits their applications for lighting and imaging. Herein, we report an organo-metal halide scintillator (TTPhP)2MnCl4 (TTPhP+ = tetraphenylphosphonium cation), which exhibits a weak TQ effect up to 200 °C under ultraviolet-visible light (efficiency loss of 5.5%) and X-ray radiation (efficiency loss of 37%). The light yield of the (TTPhP)2MnCl4 scintillator (37 000 photons MeV-1 at 200 °C) under X-ray radiation is >2 times that of the commercial scintillator LuAG:Ce (15 000 photons MeV-1 at 200 °C). The microscopic mechanism of the weak TQ effect is demonstrated to be the scintillator having the ability to compensate for the emission losses from trapped charges and the large Mn-Mn distance (10.233 Å) suppressing nonradiative recombination at high temperatures. We further demonstrate the applications of (TTPhP)2MnCl4 as high-power white-light-emitting diodes operated at currents of ≤300 mA and X-ray imaging at 200 °C with a high spatial resolution.