Customizing chiral liquid crystal scintillators for efficient circularly polarized afterglow and radiography

Environmentally adaptive circularly polarized photoluminescence and radioluminescence are critical for constructing intelligent optoelectronic devices. However, state-of-the-art chiral organic scintillators are hampered by insufficient circularly polarized luminescence (CPL) dissymmetry, limited wavelength tunability, poor triplet exciton utilization, and compromised stability under harsh operational conditions. Herein, we develop temperature-adaptive chiral diphosphoniums through rational D-A modulation and ionization engineering. Precise conformational regulation affords full-color circularly polarized fluorescence and afterglow across solution, solid, and polymeric states. The resulting helical chiral polymeric liquid crystal (CPLC) films achieve an amplified maximum g lum of 0.75 alongside robust anti-quenching, thermal, and radiation resistance. Enabled by efficient intersystem crossing (ISC) and stabilized triplet excitons, the optimized scintillator device delivers superior X-ray imaging ability. Impressively, a cascaded dual-layer reflective architecture further elevates the maximum g lum up to 1.8. This work establishes a versatile strategy toward high-performance chiral luminescent platforms for advanced 4D anti-counterfeiting and high-resolution X-ray radiography.