The Nanoplasmonic Purcell Effect in Ultrafast and High-Light-Yield Perovskite Scintillators

TL;DR

This paper introduces a nanoplasmonic approach to significantly enhance the performance of ultrafast, high-light-yield perovskite X-ray scintillators by leveraging the Purcell effect to improve decay rates and resolution.

Contribution

It combines theoretical predictions and experimental validation of nanoplasmonic materials boosting scintillator decay rates and light yields, advancing ultrafast X-ray imaging technology.

Findings

Over 120% increase in light yield

Over 60% faster decay rate

182% improvement in imaging resolution

Abstract

The development of X-ray scintillators with ultrahigh light yields and ultrafast response times is a long sought-after goal. In this work, we theoretically predict and experimentally demonstrate a fundamental mechanism that pushes the frontiers of ultrafast X-ray scintillator performance: the use of nanoscale-confined surface plasmon polariton modes to tailor the scintillator response time via the Purcell effect. By incorporating nanoplasmonic materials in scintillator devices, this work predicts over 10-fold enhancement in decay rate and 38% reduction in time resolution even with only a simple planar design. We experimentally demonstrate the nanoplasmonic Purcell effect using perovskite scintillators, enhancing the light yield by over 120% to 88 $\pm$ 11 ph/keV, and the decay rate by over 60% to 2.0 $\pm$ 0.2 ns for the average decay time, and 0.7 $\pm$ 0.1 ns for the ultrafast decay component, in good agreement with the predictions of our theoretical framework. We perform proof-of-concept X-ray imaging experiments using nanoplasmonic scintillators, demonstrating 182% enhancement in the modulation transfer function at 4 line pairs per millimeter spatial frequency. This work highlights the enormous potential of nanoplasmonics in optimizing ultrafast scintillator devices for applications including time-of-flight X-ray imaging and photon-counting computed tomography.