Scintillation
materials have been widely used in various fields,
such as medical diagnosis and industrial detection. Chalcogenides
have the potential to become a new generation of high-performance
scintillation materials due to their high effective atomic number
and good resistance to radiation damage. However, research on their
application in radiation detection is currently very scarce. Herein,
single crystals of rare earth ion-doped ternary chalcogenides NaGaS2/Eu were grown by a high-temperature solid-phase method. It
exhibits unique characteristics of structure transformation by absorbing
water molecules from the air. To maintain the anhydrous phase of the
material, we have used a strategy of organic–inorganic composites
of epoxy resin and NaGaS2/Eu to prepare devices for radiation
detection and discuss the irradiation luminescence properties of the
two phases. The anhydrous phase of NaGaS2/Eu demonstrates
excellent sensitivity to X-rays, with a low detection limit of 250
nGy s–1, which is approximately 1/22 of the medical
imaging dose. Additionally, composite flexible films were prepared,
which exhibited excellent performance in X-ray imaging. These films
enable clear observation of a wide range of objects with a high spatial
resolution of up to 13.2 line pairs per millimeter (lp mm–1), indicating that chalcogenide holds promising prospects in the
realm of X-ray imaging applications.