Journal article
Layered BiOI single crystals capable of detecting low dose rates of X-rays
- Abstract:
-
Detecting low dose rates of X-rays is critical for making safer radiology instruments, but is limited by the absorber materials available. Here, we develop bismuth oxyiodide (BiOI) single crystals into effective X-ray detectors. BiOI features complex lattice dynamics, owing to the ionic character of the lattice and weak van der Waals interactions between layers. Through use of ultrafast spectroscopy, first-principles computations and detailed optical and structural characterisation, we show that photoexcited charge-carriers in BiOI couple to intralayer breathing phonon modes, forming large polarons, thus enabling longer drift lengths for the photoexcited carriers than would be expected if self-trapping occurred. This, combined with the low and stable dark currents and high linear X-ray attenuation coefficients, leads to strong detector performance. High sensitivities reaching 1.1 × 103 μC Gyair−1 cm−2 are achieved, and the lowest dose rate directly measured by the detectors was 22 nGyair s−1. The photophysical principles discussed herein offer new design avenues for novel materials with heavy elements and low-dimensional electronic structures for (opto)electronic applications.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
Actions
Access Document
- Files:
-
-
(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 2.2MB, Terms of use)
-
(Preview, Supplementary materials, pdf, 10.1MB, Terms of use)
-
- Publisher copy:
- 10.1038/s41467-023-38008-4
Authors
- Publisher:
- Springer Nature
- Journal:
- Nature Communications More from this journal
- Volume:
- 14
- Article number:
- 2452
- Publication date:
- 2023-04-28
- Acceptance date:
- 2023-04-11
- DOI:
- EISSN:
-
2041-1723
- Language:
-
English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
-
1337162
- Local pid:
-
pubs:1337162
- Deposit date:
-
2023-04-12
- ARK identifier:
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Jagt et al.
- Copyright date:
- 2023
- Rights statement:
- © The Author(s) 2023. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.
- Notes:
- This work is related to the thesis Scalable bismuth oxyiodide devices for ionising radiation detection.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
If you are the owner of this record, you can report an update to it here: Report update to this record