Light: Science & Applications (Aug 2024)

Exciton-harvesting enabled efficient charged particle detection in zero-dimensional halides

  • Qian Wang,
  • Chenger Wang,
  • Hongliang Shi,
  • Jie Chen,
  • Junye Yang,
  • Alena Beitlerova,
  • Romana Kucerkova,
  • Zhengyang Zhou,
  • Yunyun Li,
  • Martin Nikl,
  • Xilei Sun,
  • Xiaoping OuYang,
  • Yuntao Wu

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41377-024-01532-z
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 13, no. 1
pp. 1 – 12

Abstract

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Abstract Materials for radiation detection are critically important and urgently demanded in diverse fields, starting from fundamental scientific research to medical diagnostics, homeland security, and environmental monitoring. Low-dimensional halides (LDHs) exhibiting efficient self-trapped exciton (STE) emission with high photoluminescence quantum yield (PLQY) have recently shown a great potential as scintillators. However, an overlooked issue of exciton-exciton interaction in LDHs under ionizing radiation hinders the broadening of its radiation detection applications. Here, we demonstrate an exceptional enhancement of exciton-harvesting efficiency in zero-dimensional (0D) Cs3Cu2I5:Tl halide single crystals by forming strongly localized Tl-bound excitons. Because of the suppression of non-radiative exciton-exciton interaction, an excellent α/β pulse-shape-discrimination (PSD) figure-of-merit (FoM) factor of 2.64, a superior rejection ratio of 10−9, and a high scintillation yield of 26 000 photons MeV−1 under 5.49 MeV α-ray are achieved in Cs3Cu2I5:Tl single crystals, outperforming the commercial ZnS:Ag/PVT composites for charged particle detection applications. Furthermore, a radiation detector prototype based on Cs3Cu2I5:Tl single crystal demonstrates the capability of identifying radioactive 220Rn gas for environmental radiation monitoring applications. We believe that the exciton-harvesting strategy proposed here can greatly boost the applications of LDHs materials.