article published yes Orr Be’er author Avner Shultzman author Rotem Strassberg author Georgy Dosovitskiy author Noam Veber author Roman Schuetz author Charles Roques-Carmes author e2e68fc9-6505-11ef-a541-eb4e72cc3e82 Ido Kaminer author Yehonadav Bekenstein author 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. American Chemical Society2025 eng ScintillatorHeterostructureThin filmX-ray imagingX-ray detector 1530-6984 1530-6992 3996982110.1021/acs.nanolett.4c05353 2593422-3429 yes Be’er, Orr, Avner Shultzman, Rotem Strassberg, Georgy Dosovitskiy, Noam Veber, Roman Schuetz, Charles Roques-Carmes, Ido Kaminer, and Yehonadav Bekenstein. “Heterostructure Nanoscintillator for Matching Radiation Absorbing Layers with Fast Light-Emitting Layers.” <i>Nano Letters</i>. American Chemical Society, 2025. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.nanolett.4c05353">https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.nanolett.4c05353</a>. Be’er, Orr, et al. “Heterostructure Nanoscintillator for Matching Radiation Absorbing Layers with Fast Light-Emitting Layers.” <i>Nano Letters</i>, vol. 25, no. 9, American Chemical Society, 2025, pp. 3422–29, doi:<a href="https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.nanolett.4c05353">10.1021/acs.nanolett.4c05353</a>. O. Be’er, A. Shultzman, R. Strassberg, G. Dosovitskiy, N. Veber, R. Schuetz, C. Roques-Carmes, I. Kaminer, Y. Bekenstein, Nano Letters 25 (2025) 3422–3429. Be’er O, Shultzman A, Strassberg R, et al. Heterostructure nanoscintillator for matching radiation absorbing layers with fast light-emitting layers. <i>Nano Letters</i>. 2025;25(9):3422-3429. doi:<a href="https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.nanolett.4c05353">10.1021/acs.nanolett.4c05353</a> Be’er, O., Shultzman, A., Strassberg, R., Dosovitskiy, G., Veber, N., Schuetz, R., … Bekenstein, Y. (2025). Heterostructure nanoscintillator for matching radiation absorbing layers with fast light-emitting layers. <i>Nano Letters</i>. American Chemical Society. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.nanolett.4c05353">https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.nanolett.4c05353</a> Be’er O, Shultzman A, Strassberg R, Dosovitskiy G, Veber N, Schuetz R, Roques-Carmes C, Kaminer I, Bekenstein Y. 2025. Heterostructure nanoscintillator for matching radiation absorbing layers with fast light-emitting layers. Nano Letters. 25(9), 3422–3429. O. Be’er <i>et al.</i>, “Heterostructure nanoscintillator for matching radiation absorbing layers with fast light-emitting layers,” <i>Nano Letters</i>, vol. 25, no. 9. American Chemical Society, pp. 3422–3429, 2025. 215212026-03-30T12:22:47Z2026-04-27T10:05:22Z