Oriented Microstructured Scintillator for High-Resolution X-Ray Imaging

The structured scintillator is regarded as the sole strategy for achieving high-resolution X-ray imaging. Unfortunately, the construction of large-sized and uniform integrated candidates with oriented microstructure remains an insurmountable challenge. Herein, we propose and demonstrate a novel large-scale, highly uniform integrated oriented microstructured glass composite scintillator by triggering the oriented crystallization habit of the metastable glass. It is featured by columnar microcrystalline arrays with a high refractive index embedded in the glass phase with a relatively low refractive index. This enables to form an intrinsic waveguide configuration with light confinement capabilities, in which the directional propagation of photons can be realized. As a result, an excellent scintillation performance with the X-ray excited luminescence intensity of 5.67 times that of BGO can be realized. It also demonstrates the excellent environmental resistance because of the all-oxide system. By using this oriented microstructured glass composite scintillator, the X-ray imaging system is built, and an impressive imaging resolution of 30 lp mm^-1 is successfully achieved. The progress represents a giant step toward high-resolution X-ray imaging with structured scintillators.