Modern technologies with high socio-economic relevance rely on efficient ionising radiation detection, with key applications in environmental and border monitoring, industrial inspection, medical diagnostics, precision medicine, and scientific research. Across these fields, there is strong demand for detectors that are efficient, affordable, customisable, and scalable—needs typically addressed by scintillator-based systems. However, current materials remain limited: inorganic crystals are costly, fragile, slow, and difficult to scale, while plastic scintillators have low density and limited efficiency.
UNICORN tackles these issues by developing scintillator nanocrystals (NCs) embedded in engineered host matrices. By leveraging nanochemistry, the project aims to combine the performance of inorganic crystals with the versatility and low cost of plastics. Operating in the quantum confinement regime also enables access to nanoscale physical processes not exploited in conventional detectors, allowing composite nanoscintillators with tunable, application-specific performance.
Achieving this vision requires an interdisciplinary approach integrating modelling, materials chemistry, and experimental physics. The project addresses nanoscale scintillation mechanisms as well as challenges in NC synthesis, stabilisation, and incorporation into dense optical matrices through tailored material strategies and advanced characterisation.
UNICORN’s main objectives are:
Design and functionalisation of NCs for high-performance radiation detection.
Integration of NCs into optical-grade, ultra-dense nanocomposite scintillators.
Investigation of photophysical processes under ionising radiation, including excitation pathways and suppression of non-radiative losses.
Design and validation of prototype detectors with optimised light collection and energy resolution.
In the second reporting period, efforts focused on identifying and characterising material-engineering strategies for high-performance nanocomposite scintillators, guided by earlier results and oriented toward integration into detector testbeds.
Key challenges addressed included: (i) achieving high NC loading in polymers while ensuring compatibility and manageable processing; (ii) enhancing interactions between NCs and secondary electron cascades despite size–scale mismatches; and (iii) mitigating light reabsorption while maintaining fast, efficient scintillation.
These efforts led to innovative, interoperable solutions surpassing the state of the art. A major breakthrough was the demonstration of a non-classical scintillator, where emission arises from collective quantum states in NC superlattices, yielding picosecond-scale response times and coherence properties—highly relevant for medical imaging, ultrafast detection, and future quantum sensing.
In parallel, UNICORN explored conjugated organic polymers combined with high-Z nanocrystals, offering a new route to high-performance plastic scintillators. These systems provide strong oscillator strength, reduced reabsorption losses, scalability, and spectral tunability, opening pathways for next-generation scintillation materials.
