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New Eco-Friendly Organometallic X-ray Scintillators

Scintillation based X-ray detection has received great attention for its application of radiation detectors for radiation exposure monitoring, security inspection (scan your luggage in the airport), space exploration, and medical imaging (images of your teeth) [1]. In recent years, scintillators receive extensive attention because of their ability to convert ionizing radiation into visible photons, and hence it is a common type of X-ray detector. While various types of materials have been used for X-ray scintillators, there are still many issues and limitations to existing organic and inorganic scintillation materials, for example, laborious environments are required for the preparation of inorganic crystals because of their hygroscopic nature, anisotropic scintillation of organic crystals, low light yields in plastics, and so on. Hence, searching for high-performance scintillation materials and its low-cost, are still of great scientific and practical interest [2]. 

Developing low-cost scintillation based on organic materials can be easily manufactured and perform well remains a great challenge,” Ma said. “This approach will pave the way for exploring new approaches to create these important devices”. Prof. Biwu Ma, from Florida State University, has developed a new environmentally friendly material that could be used to make flexible X-ray detectors at a very low cost than existing technologies [3].



Figure 1. The photographs of a flexible scintillator screen based on (C38H34P2)MnBr bending stress [3].

The high-performance eco-friendly X-ray scintillators based on a new 0D organic manganese(II) halide hybrid (C38H34P2)MnBr4 has been developed to exhibit highly efficient green emission upon photo and X-ray exposure and they have not used lead or any toxic heavy metals. This organic manganese (II) halide hybrid was synthesized by low-cost commercially available raw materials in room-temperature via solvent diffusion method with excellent repeatability and large scalability. High-quality phosphonium manganese bromide single crystals with sizes of >1µm shows of greater thermal stability and bright green emission peaked at 517 nm (Figure 1).

X-ray Scintillation Properties
To compare the scintillation performance of (C38H34P2)MnBr4, the standard reference material cerium-doped lutetium aluminum garnet (Ce:LuAG) was used. The X-ray image of (C38H34P2)MnBr4 single crystals is much brighter than that of Ce:LuAG. The X-ray radioluminescence (RL) spectral data was obtained by using the Edinburgh FS5 fluorescence spectrophotometer equipped with an X-ray generator. The RL intensities were measured under various X-ray dose rates for (C38H34P2)MnBr4 and Ce:LuAG for the evaluation of the scintillator response to X-ray dose rate. To evaluate the performance of scintillators, the main important parameter was the ‘Light yield’ which is mainly dependent on the Radio Luminescence (RL) spectra and the amplitude of X-ray response. Hence (C38H34P2)MnBr4, is found to be significantly less toxic than the existing scintillators based upon the toxicity classification (health and environment) information of metal halides from the material safety data sheet. 

X-ray Imaging Test 
Organic manganese(II) halide was used to make powders with the particle size <3 µm which performs very well for imaging and can be combined with polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) a poly merto create a flexible composite that can be used as a scintillator. Here, they have used flexible scintillators with large size (4.5 x 5.8 cm2) for demonstration. For practical imaging applications, the main important parameter is ‘Image contrast’, image lag or ghosting would happen if the emission with long life has a strong glow after X-ray being turned off.

To the point, they have been efficiently developed and demonstrated, a new organic manganese(II) halide hybrid (C38H34P2)MnBr4 which exhibits bright green emission upon photo and X-ray excitations and the X-ray imaging were successfully demonstrated with high resolution. The X-ray scintillation characteristics were found to be superior to the metal halide nanocrystals. 
To explore a new way with a low-cost, facile preparation, high-performance eco-friendly, and state-of-the-art scintillation performance, organic manganese(II) hybrid (C38H34P2)MnBr4 radiation scintillators can be used which makes a highly promising scintillator available for commercial applications. 

References 
  1. P. Lecoq,  Development of new scintillators for medical applications. Nucl. Instrum. Meth. A 809, 130–139 (2016).
  2. E. Ariesanti et al., Improved growth and scintillation properties of intrinsic, non-hygroscopic scintillator Cs2HfCl6. J. Lumin. 217, 116784 (2020).
  3. L.J. Xu et al., Highly efficient eco-friendly X-ray scintillators based on an organic manganese halide. Nature Communications, 11, (2020); DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-18119-y
Blog Written By
Dr. S. Chandrasekar
Institute for Advanced Study
Shenzhen University, China
Editors
Dr. A. S. Ganeshraja
Dr. K. Rajkumar

Reviewers
Dr. Y. Sasikumar
Dr. K. Vaithinathan
Dr. S. Thirumurugan


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