Scintillation is a property of certain materials that is sought after for applications in a variety of different academic fields and industries. This property is useful for the development of radiation detectors in fields such as homeland security, medicine, astrophysics, and a variety of different industries. While there are many many scintillation materials, researchers in both academia and industry are increasingly interested in using transition metal cluster complexes to optimize the radioluminescence and scintillation because of the high atomic numbers of transition metals and the high photoluminescent quantum yields associated with these clusters. Copper iodide clusters have been extensively studied for their peculiar photoluminescent properties, and recently, there have been reports of copper iodide clusters exhibiting visible light radioluminescent properties upon X-ray irradiation. We studied two copper iodide cluster complexes, namely [Na2(18-crown-6)2(H2O)3][Cu4I6] (I) and [Li(benzo-15-crown-5)2(H2O)]2[Cu4I6] (II) and herein report their photoluminescent and radioluminescent properties. These complexes share the anionic [Cu4I6]2- cluster and therefore have similar photoluminescent properties, such as emission maxima centered around 535 nm and broadband excitation ranging from about 350 to 450 nm. We conducted radioluminescent studies on (I) using beta radiation as an excitation source. The radioluminescent lifetime under beta excitation was found to be 2.14 μs. This radioluminescent lifetime resembles the photoluminescent lifetime, which we found to be 2.19 μs. These complexes have the potential to be incorporated into inorganic and organic matrices and developed into nanocarriers, opening the possibility of their use in radiation detection device manufacturing and applications in therapeutic devices and strategies in medicine. The ability to vary the cation in these complexes makes it possible to target absorption and radioluminescence by different radiation sources, depending on the cross section of the cation in the complex.

Radioluminescent properties of an anionic copper iodide cluster under beta excitation

ACS Spring 2022

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