Chain-Mobility-Enabled 1D Lanthanide Coordination Polymer Glassy Scintillators for Underwater X-Ray Videography

Lanthanide(III) coordination scintillators feature efficient triplet harvesting and narrow-band emission, making them promising for X-ray imaging applications. However, their rigid coordination environments hinder melt-processing into large-area, transparent glassy scintillator screens. Herein, a "rigid-node flexible-linker" molecular design strategy that facilitates chain-mobility-enabled glass-forming in lanthanide coordination scintillators by constructing one-dimensional (1D) coordination chains is proposed. By integrating dibenzoylmethane antenna with flexible dual-phosphine-oxide linkers (OP-Cn, n = 2, 4, 6, 8), a series of 1D Eu-OP-Cn coordination polymers is constructed, enabling the simultaneous realization of efficient ligand-sensitized radioluminescence and the chain-mobility required for vitrification, thereby allowing transformation from crystalline powders into glassy states. Benefiting from rigid local coordination environments that suppress nonradiative decay, crystalline Eu-OP-C2 exhibits a near-unity photoluminescence quantum yield (97.5%) and an ultrahigh relative light yield of 70379 photons MeV^-1. Besides, elongating the alkyl-chain length increases segmental flexibility, allowing Eu-OP-C6/C8 to form water-stable, transparent glassy scintillators via melt-quenching method. Notably, Eu-OP-C8 glass delivers radioluminescence intensity 12.1 times higher than Bi₄Ge₃O₁₂, enabling high-resolution X-ray imaging (> 30 lp mm^-1) and real-time underwater X-ray videography (2K, 60 fps). Moreover, this strategy is readily extendable to Tb³⁺, Sm³⁺ and Dy³⁺, establishing a general molecular-design paradigm for melt-processable lanthanide coordination glassy scintillators.