Nanoscale modifications yield a 10x enhancement in scintillator efficiency

A team featuring ISN-affiliated MIT faculty Marin Soljačić, Steven Johnson, and John Joannopoulos has produced a remarkable advancement in scintillation — the process by which ionizing radiation is converted to visible light for a variety of purposes including medical, scientific, security, and other types of imaging. One result could be an order of magnitude increase in the efficiency of x-ray imagers (meaning, for example, a machine that requires 1/10 the amount of x-rays to produce a standard medical image, or that produces a 10x brighter image using the same amount of x-rays as traditional systems).
Two differently colored squares, demonstrating improved scintillator efficiency via surface modifications as researched at MIT.

Researchers at MIT have shown how one could improve the efficiency of scintillators by at least tenfold by changing the material’s surface. This image shows a TEM grid on scotch tape, with the right side showing the scene after it is corrected. Image: Courtesy of the researchers, edited by MIT News

Visual representation of light source stages, highlighting nanophotonic scintillators and their role in x-ray scintillation.

Nanophotonic scintillators — (A) Nanophotonic scintillators consist of nanophotonic structures integrated with scintillators. Scintillation can be modeled, tailored, and optimized by combining energy loss dynamics, occupation level dynamics, and nanophotonics modeling. (B) Order-of-magnitude x-ray scintillation enhancement with a photonic crystal nanophotonic scintillator. (C) X-ray scan taken with a nanophotonic scintillator (white dashed square). Image: Charles Roques-Carmes et al., A framework for scintillation in nanophotonics. Science 375, eabm 9293 (2022)