Scintillators with aggregation-induced emission

Scintillators are vital components in high-energy radiation detectors and are used in fields like high-energy physics, non-destructive testing, radiochemistry, and medical diagnostics. Scintillators with aggregation-induced emission (AIE), through rational molecular design and preparation techniques, can be endowed with such properties that effectively overcome the inherent defects of existing inorganic and/or organic scintillators, such as high costs and poor mechanical properties in inorganic types and low light yield and aggregation-caused quenching for organic kinds, thus affording novel optoelectronic properties, superior performance, and broader applications. This review classifies AIE scintillators from a molecular perspective, based on their luminescence mechanisms and construction strategies, into fluorescent scintillators, thermally activated delayed fluorescence scintillators, metal cluster scintillators, organic-inorganic hybrid scintillators, and metal-organic framework scintillators. This review starts with analyses of these building strategies and the structure-performance relationships and then describes the applications of AIE scintillators based on their molecular structures and optoelectronic properties.