Chiral Molecular Scintillators of Zn‐Tb Heterometallic Complex With Excellent Circularly Polarized Luminescence and High‐Resolution X‐Ray Imaging

ABSTRACT Chiral molecular scintillators that can emit circularly polarized luminescence (CPL) under X‐ray irradiation have significant application potential in fields such as high‐resolution imaging, 3D display, quantum computing, and deep‐induced enantioselective photopolymerization. Herein, two pairs of novel chiral molecular scintillators of Zn‐Tb heterometallic complexes, namely [Zn 2 Tb( R,R/S,S −L) 2 (H 2 O)X 2 ](X)·CH 3 OH·H 2 O (X = Cl − for R/S ‐1 ; X = Br − for R/S ‐2 ) were synthesized. The enantiomeric complexes have CPL with asymmetry factors (| g lum |) of 3.8 × 10 −2 and 3.5 × 10 −2 at the strongest emission and high quantum yield of 73.2% and 58.4% for R/S ‐1/2 , respectively. Moreover, R/S ‐1/2 exhibit circularly polarized radioluminescence (CPRL) with ultra‐bright emission, high light yields, and ultra‐low X‐ray detection limit. The g RL are around 1.2 × 10 −3 for R/S ‐1 and 6.1 × 10 −3 for R/S ‐2 in solid state. The X‐ray detection limits are 63.91 for R ‐1 and 39.92 nGy s −1 for R ‐2 . Furthermore, R/S ‐1/2 @PMMA films with higher g RL of 7.2 × 10 −3 and 7.5 × 10 −3 were fabricated for X‐ray imaging, proving a superior resolution of 20.131 lp/mm for the internal information of objects. This work reports the first synthesis of the chiral Zn‐Tb heterometallic complexes exhibiting excellent CPL and CPRL, which provides new insights into the synthetic design of chiral molecular scintillators.