Boosting X‐Ray Imaging with a Highly Emissive Steroidal Gold Cluster Featuring Aggregation‐Induced Circularly Polarized Luminescence
X-ray imaging is essential for safety inspections, disease diagnosis, and treatment. High-performance X-ray scintillators require high luminous efficiency and excellent contrast enhancement. Circularly polarized luminescence (CPL) materials effectively suppress crosstalk and enhance image contrast. Herein, a novel hexanuclear chiral gold cluster (Cluster-ETH) with steroidal ethisterone frameworks is presented. The rigidity-engineered AIE cluster achieves high quantum yield (84.9%) and an intense CPL signal with a g<sub>lum</sub> value of -5.3 × 10<sup>-3</sup> in the aggregated state. Crystal analysis and TD-DFT calculations show that helical packing via hydrogen bonding interactions and aurophilic interactions drives efficient triplet harvesting. Cluster-ETH enables the first chiral gold cluster scintillator for X-ray imaging, demonstrating a low-detection-limit (118 nGy s<sup>-1</sup>). Cluster-ETH establishes the novel application of chiral gold clusters in advanced imaging technologies, providing a paradigm for the development of efficient X-ray scintillators.
Authors
- Sheng‐Hua Liu
- Junyi Gong (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7592-7132)
- Jia‐Wang Yuan (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4760-6187)
- Xiaoyan Wang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5487-0584)
- Debin Fu
- Jing Zhang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0001-5370-0014)
Institutions
- Shenzhen University (CN)
- Shijiazhuang University (CN)
- Zhengzhou University (CN)
- Central China Normal University (CN)
- Nanfang Hospital (CN)
- Shenzhen Technology University (CN)
- Southern Medical University (CN)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Small
- Published
- 2025-10-16
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1002/smll.202509741
- Citations
- 1
- Primary Topic
- Nanocluster Synthesis and Applications
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.52