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Scientists from the National University of Singapore (NUS) have developed a highly effective and general molecular design that enables an enhancement in radioluminescence within organometallic scintillators by more than three orders of magnitude. This enhancement harnesses X-ray-induced triplet exciton recycling within lanthanide metal complexes. Detection of ionizing radiation is crucial in diverse fields, such as medical radiography, environmental monitoring and astronomy. As a result, significant efforts have been dedicated to the development of luminescent materials that respond to X-rays. However, current high-performance scintillators are almost exclusively limited to ceramic and perovskite materials, which face issues such as complex manufacturing processes,...

Silicon, the standard semiconducting material used in a host of applications—computer central processing units (CPUs), semiconductor chips, detectors, and solar cells—is an abundant, naturally occurring material. However, it is expensive to mine and to purify. Perovskites—a family of materials nicknamed for their crystalline structure—have shown extraordinary promise in recent years as a far less expensive, equally efficient replacement for silicon in solar cells and detectors. Now, a study led by Chunlei Guo, a professor of optics at the University of Rochester, suggests that perovskites may become far more efficient. Researchers typically synthesize perovskites in a wet lab, and then apply...