Self-assembled eco-friendly metal halide heterostructures for bright and color-tunable white radioluminescence

Scintillators with color-tunable radioluminescence have attracted great attention due to the advantage of satisfying needs required by different radiation detection applications. However, while most traditional scintillators achieve efficient radioluminescence through exciton migration or activator-assisted recombination mechanism, the challenges relating to spectral modulation remain. Here, a composite scintillator consisting of a eco-friendly metal halide heterostructure demonstrates color-tunable radioluminescence with color temperature ranging from 2,505.6 K to 14,215.9 K. Under X-ray irradiation, the composite scintillator emits bright white light with a color rendering index of 92.6 set and a luminescent yield of 21,400 photons/MeV, which originates from self-assembled metal halide heterostructure and efficient energy transfer. The performance exhibited by the composite heterostructure material provides and proves a feasible strategy for realizing color-tunable scintillators in ionizing radiation detection.