Efficient Organic‐Inorganic Sn <sup>4+</sup> ‐Based Halide Phosphorescent Scintillators Enabled by Enhanced Triplet Exciton Utilization and Excited Energy Level Regulation
Despite remarkable X-ray scintillation performance of inorganic or organic crystal materials, their practical application is often hindered by poor processability, weak X-ray absorption, and/or inefficient exciton utilization. Developing organic-inorganic hybrid metal-halide phosphorescent scintillators is thus of vital importance for X-ray imaging applications, yet remains scarcely explored. Herein, we report a series of organic-inorganic hybrid Sn<sup>4+</sup>-based metal halides, designated as 3PP(R)-Sn-Cl (R = H, F1, F2, Cl, Br), which exhibit efficient fluorescence, thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF), and room-temperature phosphorescence (RTP) tailored through the substituent "R". Multiple weak intermolecular interactions and strategic variation of the "R" group effectively modulate molecular stacking and excited-state dynamics, thereby boosting X-ray absorption and triplet exciton utilization. As a result, 3PP( <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mml:semantics><mml:mi>H</mml:mi> <mml:annotation>${\bf H}$</mml:annotation></mml:semantics> </mml:math> )-Sn-Cl achieves a record RTP efficiency of 79.1% and a long lifetime of 164.4 ms, the highest values reported to date for undoped Sn<sup>4+</sup>-based halides. Furthermore, we demonstrate multilevel information encryption applications leveraging the highly sensitive thermochromism properties of 3PP(R)-Sn-Cl. More importantly, benefiting from strong heavy-atom-effect and efficient triplet exciton utilization, 3PP(Br)-Sn-Cl exhibits a high light yield of 31213.3 photons MeV<sup>-1</sup> and a low detection limit of 328.2 nGy/s under X-ray irradiation, enabling efficient radiography with a spatial resolution over 14.0 lp mm<sup>-1</sup>. This work for the first time demonstrates Sn<sup>4+</sup>-based metal halides as high-performance scintillators for next-generation X-ray imaging technologies.
Authors
- Dai‐Bin Kuang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6773-2319)
- Hui Li (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9198-3951)
- Siqi Li (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9567-0474)
- Junhao Ma
- Yuanyuan Chang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0008-0167-8215)
- Lei Zhou
- Wang Yang
- Yanan Zhao
Institutions
- Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China (CN)
- Southwest University (CN)
- Suzhou University of Science and Technology (CN)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Angewandte Chemie International Edition
- Published
- 2026-02-17
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1002/anie.202524854
- Primary Topic
- Luminescence and Fluorescent Materials
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00