Synergistic strain engineering of perovskite single crystals for highly stable and sensitive X-ray detectors with low-bias imaging and monitoring

X-ray detectors based on dual-site-doped perovskite single crystals exhibit excellent sensitivity of 2.6 x 10(4) mu C Gy(air)(-1) cm(-2) under a low field of 1 V cm(-1). The detectable dose rate is as low as 7.09 nGy(air) s(-1). The operational stability is beyond half a year. Although three-dimensional metal halide perovskite (ABX(3)) single crystals are promising next-generation materials for radiation detection, state-of-the-art perovskite X-ray detectors include methylammonium as A-site cations, limiting the operational stability. Previous efforts to improve the stability using formamidinium-caesium-alloyed A-site cations usually sacrifice the detection performance because of high trap densities. Here we successfully solve this trade-off between stability and detection performance by synergistic composition engineering, where we include A-site alloys to decrease the trap density and B-site dopants to release the microstrain induced by A-site alloying. As such, we develop high-performance perovskite X-ray detectors with excellent stability. Our X-ray detectors exhibit high sensitivity of (2.6 +/- 0.1) x 10(4) mu C Gy(air)(-1) cm(-2) under 1 V cm(-1) and ultralow limit of detection of 7.09 nGy(air) s(-1). In addition, they feature long-term operational stability over half a year and impressive thermal stability up to 125 degrees C. We further demonstrate the promise of our perovskite X-ray detectors for low-bias portable applications with high-quality X-ray imaging and monitoring prototypes.

Automated summary

This article introduces X-ray detectors based on dual-site-doped perovskite single crystals, which exhibit excellent sensitivity and stability. The trade-off between stability and detection performance is successfully solved by alloying and doping engineering.