Dynamic Monolithic X-ray Imager with Enhanced Performance via Strain Relaxation in Metal-Halide Scintillator

Abstract

Abstract Scintillation X-ray detectors have widespread applications in medical imaging, non-destructive testing, and security inspection. In recent years, metal halide materials have gained attention as scintillators due to their superior properties, such as excellent luminescent performance, non-toxicity, and cost-effectiveness etc. Here, we found the lattice strain in Cs5Cu3Cl6I2 can obviously deteriorate its scintillation performance, and the relaxion of lattice strain in Cs5Cu3Cl6I2 largely reduced nonradiative recombination and enhanced its stability. As a result, a high photoluminescence quantum yield (PLQY) of 99.5% was achieved in the strain-released Cs5Cu3Cl6I2 scintillator. We further developed the first monolithic X-ray imaging systems by integrating Cs5Cu3Cl6I2 scintillators with Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS), which delivered superior imaging clarity with a high-resolution over 30 line-pairs per millimeter (lp mm− 1) and capability of fast dynamic X-ray imaging. Moreover, the Cs5Cu3Cl6I2 monolithic X-ray imaging system shows remarkable stability against heat, humidity, and continuous X-ray irradiation. This research presents a feasible pathway for fabricating monolithic X-ray imagers and highlights their potential for practical applications. We anticipate that our findings will offer new insights into strain engineering of metal halide scintillators and structural design of advanced X-ray imaging systems.