Abstract
Highly efficient scintillation crystals with short decay times are indispensable for improving the performance of numerous detection and imaging instruments that use- X-rays, gamma-quanta, ionising particles or neutrons. Halide perovskites emerged recently as very promising materials for detection of ionising radiation that motivated further exploration of the materials. In this work, we report on excellent scintillation properties of CsPbBr3 crystals when cooled to cryogenic temperatures. The temperature dependence of luminescence spectra, decay kinetics and light yield under excitation with X-rays and α-particles was investigated. It is shown that the observed changes of spectral and kinetic characteristics of the crystal with temperature can be consistently explained by radiative decay of free excitons, bound and trapped excitons as well as electron-hole pairs originating from their disintegration. It has been found that the crystal exhibits a fast decay time constant of 1 ns at 7 K. The scintillation light yield of CsPbBr3 at 7 K is assessed to be 50,000 ± 10,000 ph/MeV at excitation with 12 keV X-rays and 109,000 ± 22,000 ph/MeV at excitation with α-particles of 241Am. This finding places CsPbBr3 in an excellent position for the development of a new generation of cryogenic, efficient scintillation detectors with nanosecond response time, marking a step-change in opportunities for scintillator-based applications.
Highlights
Efficient scintillation crystals with short decay times are indispensable for improving the performance of numerous detection and imaging instruments that use- X-rays, gamma-quanta, ionising particles or neutrons
A step change of interest in the halide perovskite family has occurred during the last decade as a result of rapid evolution of solid-state photovoltaic devices based on hybrid organic metal halide perovskites - materials with the general formula MAPbX3, where MA = methyloamine CH3NH3, and X = Cl, Br, or I6,7
The necessity of improving the detection efficiency of hard X-rays (>100 keV) saw the initiation of the development of X-ray detectors based on single crystals of hybrid organic metal halide perovskites[11,12,13]
Summary
Efficient scintillation crystals with short decay times are indispensable for improving the performance of numerous detection and imaging instruments that use- X-rays, gamma-quanta, ionising particles or neutrons. The success of hybrid www.nature.com/scientificreports organic metal halide perovskites triggered an increase of research activity on their all-inorganic counterparts, which offer even higher X-ray absorption and much better chemical stability These efforts resulted recently in the advent of a single crystal CsPbBr3 detector for hard X-rays and gamma quanta with excellent energy resolution of 3.8% at 662 keV, which is comparable with the capability of commercially available detectors[14]. The combination of extensive research in this field and advances in the fabrication of CsPbX3 nanocrystals resulted recently in an important technological breakthrough – the development of a highly sensitive scintillation screen for X-ray imaging[20,21,22,23] These achievements prompted renewed interest in studies of scintillation properties of inorganic perovskite single crystals. Such studies allow deeper insight into the physical processes that occur in perovskite materials in general, enabling further optimization
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