Abstract
Radiation detection is of utmost importance in fundamental scientific research, as well as medical diagnostics, homeland security, environmental monitoring and industrial control. Lead halide perovskites (LHPs) are attracting growing attention as high-atomic-number materials for next-generation scintillators and photoconductors for ionizing radiation detection. To unlock their full potential as reliable and cost-effective alternatives to conventional materials, it is necessary for LHPs to conjugate high scintillation yields with emission stability under high doses of ionizing radiation. To date, no definitive solution has been devised to optimize the scintillation efficiency and kinetics of LHPs and nothing is known of their radiation hardness for doses above a few kilograys, to the best of our knowledge. Here we demonstrate that CsPbBr3 nanocrystals exhibit exceptional radiation hardness for γ-radiation doses as high as 1 MGy. Spectroscopic and radiometric experiments highlight that despite their defect tolerance, standard CsPbBr3 nanocrystals suffer from electron trapping in dense surface defects that are eliminated by post-synthesis fluorination. This results in >500% enhancement in scintillation efficiency, which becomes comparable to commercial scintillators, and still retaining exceptional levels of radiation hardness. These results have important implications for the widespread use of LHPs in ultrastable and efficient radiation detectors.
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Data availability
The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding authors upon reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
This work received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation programme under grant agreement no. 101004761 (AIDAINNOVA) and financial support from Guangdong Province’s 2018–2019 Key R&D Program (2019B010924001) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC 22175113). We thank R. Huang from East China Normal University for help with the aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy measurements and analyses.
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S.B. conceived this study. M.L. synthesized and characterized the NCs under the supervision of L.L. A. Cemmi and I.D.S. performed the irradiation procedures. J.P. performed the XRD characterization under the supervision of A. Comotti M.L.Z. performed the optical experiments under the supervision of F.M. and S.B. F. Cova performed the radiometric characterization under the supervision of M.F. and A.V. F.R. performed the CL experiments. M.L.Z., F. Cova, F. Carulli, C.R., A.E. and S.B. analysed the data. S.B. wrote the paper in consultation with all the authors. M.L.Z. and F. Cova contributed equally to this work.
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Zaffalon, M.L., Cova, F., Liu, M. et al. Extreme γ-ray radiation hardness and high scintillation yield in perovskite nanocrystals. Nat. Photon. 16, 860–868 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-022-01103-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-022-01103-x
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