@article{21521,
  abstract     = {Fast-emitting scintillators are essential for advanced diagnostic techniques, yet many suffer from low radiation attenuation. This trade-off is particularly pronounced in polymer scintillators, which, despite their fast emission, exhibit low density and low atomic numbers, limiting the radiation attenuation factor, resulting in low detection efficiency. Here, we overcome this limitation by creating a heterostructure scintillator of alternating nanometric layers, combining fast light-emitting polymer scintillator layers and transparent stopping layers with a high radiation attenuation factor. The nanolayer thicknesses are tuned to optimize the penetration depth of recoil electrons in active emissive layers, maximizing the conversion of X-rays to visible light. This design increases light output by up to 1.5 times and enhances imaging resolution by a factor of 2 compared to homogeneous polymer scintillators due to the ability to use thinner samples. These results demonstrate the potential of heterostructure scintillators as next-generation detector materials, overcoming the limitations of homogeneous scintillators.},
  author       = {Be’er, Orr and Shultzman, Avner and Strassberg, Rotem and Dosovitskiy, Georgy and Veber, Noam and Schuetz, Roman and Roques-Carmes, Charles and Kaminer, Ido and Bekenstein, Yehonadav},
  issn         = {1530-6992},
  journal      = {Nano Letters},
  keywords     = {Scintillator, Heterostructure, Thin film, X-ray imaging, X-ray detector},
  number       = {9},
  pages        = {3422--3429},
  publisher    = {American Chemical Society},
  title        = {{Heterostructure nanoscintillator for matching radiation absorbing layers with fast light-emitting layers}},
  doi          = {10.1021/acs.nanolett.4c05353},
  volume       = {25},
  year         = {2025},
}

@article{21524,
  abstract     = {In X-ray tubes, more than 99% of the kilowatts of power supplied to generate X-rays via bremsstrahlung is lost as heat in the anode. Therefore, thermal management is a critical barrier to the development of more powerful X-ray tubes with higher brightness and spatial coherence, which are needed to translate imaging modalities such as phase-contrast imaging to the clinic. In rotating anode X-ray tubes, the most common design, thermal radiation is a bottleneck that prevents efficient cooling of the anode─the hottest part of the device by far. We predict that nanophotonic patterning of the anode of an X-ray tube enhances heat dissipation via thermal radiation, enabling it to operate at higher powers without an increase in temperature. The focal spot size, which is related to the spatial coherence of generated X-rays, can also be reduced at a constant temperature. A major advantage of our “nanophotonic thermal management” approach is that in principle, it allows complete control over the spectrum and direction of thermal radiation, which can lead to optimal thermal routing and improved performance.},
  author       = {Pajovic, Simo and Roques-Carmes, Charles and Choi, Seou and Kooi, Steven E. and Gupta, Rajiv and Zalis, Michael E. and Čelanović, Ivan and Soljačić, Marin},
  issn         = {1936-086X},
  journal      = {ACS Nano},
  keywords     = {X-ray tubes, thermal management, nanophotonics, thermal radiation, X-ray imaging, high-temperature},
  number       = {35},
  pages        = {31363--31370},
  publisher    = {American Chemical Society},
  title        = {{Nanophotonic thermal management in X-ray tubes}},
  doi          = {10.1021/acsnano.5c05186},
  volume       = {19},
  year         = {2025},
}