Efficient radioactive gas detection by scintillating porous metal–organic frameworks
Natural and anthropogenic gas radionuclides such as radon, xenon, hydrogen and krypton isotopes must be monitored to be managed as pathogenic agents, radioactive diagnostic agents or nuclear activity indicators. State-of-the-art detectors based on liquid scintillators suffer from laborious preparati...
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Published in | Nature photonics Vol. 17; no. 8; pp. 672 - 678 |
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Main Authors | , , , , , , , , , , , , , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
London
Nature Publishing Group UK
01.08.2023
Nature Publishing Group |
Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | Natural and anthropogenic gas radionuclides such as radon, xenon, hydrogen and krypton isotopes must be monitored to be managed as pathogenic agents, radioactive diagnostic agents or nuclear activity indicators. State-of-the-art detectors based on liquid scintillators suffer from laborious preparation and limited solubility for gases, which affect the accuracy of the measurements. The actual challenge is to find solid scintillating materials simultaneously capable of concentrating radioactive gases and efficiently producing visible light revealed with high sensitivity. The high porosity, combined with the use of scintillating building blocks in metal–organic frameworks (MOFs), offers the possibility to satisfy these requisites. We demonstrate the capability of a hafnium-based MOF incorporating dicarboxy-9,10-diphenylanthracene as a scintillating conjugated ligand to detect gas radionuclides. Metal–organic frameworks show fast scintillation, a fluorescence yield of ∼40%, and accessible porosity suitable for hosting noble gas atoms and ions. Adsorption and detection of
85
Kr,
222
Rn and
3
H radionuclides are explored through a newly developed device that is based on a time coincidence technique. Metal–organic framework crystalline powder demonstrated an improved sensitivity, showing a linear response down to a radioactivity value below 1 kBq m
−3
for
85
Kr, which outperforms commercial devices. These results support the possible use of scintillating porous MOFs to fabricate sensitive detectors of natural and anthropogenic radionuclides.
Detection of gas radionuclides is limited in sensitivity with present methods, but may be useful in energy, security, medical and other sectors. In this work, gas-concentrating porous scintillating metal–organic frameworks are demonstrated for gas radionuclide detection. |
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ISSN: | 1749-4885 1749-4893 |
DOI: | 10.1038/s41566-023-01211-2 |