High-performance organic–inorganic hybrid manganese halide scintillator array for superior-resolution X-ray imaging

Abstract

Pb-free organic–inorganic metal halides play an increasingly important role in X-ray scintillator imaging applications because of their high luminescent quantum yield, excellent stability, and environmentally friendly characteristics. However, traditional scintillator materials suffer from high toxicity and pose environmental risks, while current lead-free materials generally face challenges of low luminescence efficiency, poor stability, severe optical crosstalk and complicated preparation processes, which severely limit the development of high-resolution imaging. To overcome these industrial challenges, we developed a high-performance manganese-based (C₁₉H₁₇ClP)₂MnCl₄ single crystal that achieves an extremely high PLQY of 96.63%, along with an excellent light yield of 53 159.6 photons per MeV and a low detection limit of 182.5 nGy_air per s. Furthermore, the pixelated scintillator fabricated via a solution process features a 25 μm aperture in the array, significantly reducing optical crosstalk while achieving an outstanding spatial resolution of 24.6 lp mm⁻¹. This demonstrates its strong potential for medical and security imaging applications.