Lead-free bright yellow emissive Rb2AgCl3 scintillators with nanosecond radioluminescence

Scintillators have recently attracted increased attention because of their potential applications in various fields, such as medical imaging, security, and nondestructive inspection . However, the response time of commercial scintillators is normally in microseconds or milliseconds only, a property that restricts their practical applications in high-resolution and dynamic X-ray imaging. Here, we report Rb 2 AgCl 3 crystals as an efficient scintillator material with ultrafast response time. The Rb 2 AgCl 3 crystals were found to have a one-dimensional structure and a bright-orange emission peak at 580 nm and a quantum yield of 60.0%. Experimental and computational studies revealed that the strong emission might have originated from self-trapping excitons that resulted into large Stokes shifts and high quantum efficiency. Upon X-ray excitation, the Rb 2 AgCl 3 crystals displayed a fast scintillation decay time of 9.5 ns and achieved a light yield of 18,300 photons MeV −1 . The ratio of light yield to decay time could reach up to 1926 photons MeV −1 ns −1 , which was higher than that of existing commercial scintillators. As a scintillator, Rb 2 AgCl 3 crystals are a promising material with potential applications in dynamic real-time imaging with a high spatial resolution owing to its nontoxicity, good stability, high light yield, and short decay time.