Shining light on radiation detection and energy transfer: Triazole ligands used for detection of radiation and lanthanide binding

Some substances, fluorophores, absorb light and then emit that light again as fluorescence. Apart from absorption of light, some of these substances can also emit light after having absorbed energy from radiation. A substance which can absorb radiation and emit the energy as light is called a scintillator. For some types of radiation detection large detectors (shipping container size) are needed and the easiest way to fill these is with liquid scintillators.

Radiation is all around us and comes from many different sources (space, Earth, and even bananas), but radiation is not always readily detected. The need to detect radiation appears in many fields; in science it is needed to increase fundamental knowledge, hospitals, where radiation is used for treatment, need to monitor the dosage, and in the control of nuclear power reactors. Neutrinos are super light particles that almost never interact with matter and insight can be gained as activity in nuclear reactors inside a nuclear power plant by detecting them. However, large detectors filled with improved scintillator fluids are needed to detect these neutrinos

During the research described in this thesis, a new class of compounds was developed, boron triazoles, which emit blue light when there is radiation present. This radiation can be in the form of either light or nuclear radiation thus proving that boron triazoles can be used as a scintillator. Furthermore energy transfer in scintillators was investigated and it was shown that increasing the solubility of boron triazoles is essential to reach application.

In addition to boron triazoles, lanthanide triazole complexes were investigated as they emit with highly defined spectra and long lifetimes which is useful in medical science as these emit specific colors enabling the use of them as markers in a aqueous medium.