Abstract: Scintillators are key materials for radiation detection field. They have wide applications in many fields such as high-energy physics, medical diagnostics, astronomy, radioactivity exploration and homeland security. However, most of the reported scintillators (e.g. NaI:Tl and LaBr₃:Ce) can hardly provide a perfect combination of high light yield and energy resolution, excellent ambient stability and low cost. It is urgent to discover novel scintillators with outstanding comprehensive performance and ideal cost. Zero-dimensional (0D) metal halides, possessing abundant advantages such as high light yield, weak self-adsorption, strong ambient adaptability, considerable stability under irradiation, are good candidates of the next-generation scintillators. This review consolidates the recent research progress of 0D metal halide scintillators towards radiation detection applications. First, the basic properties as well as the scintillation mechanism of 0D metal halides are analyzed at molecular scale, especially their unique self-trapped exciton emission characteristic. Then, some typical 0D metal halides which show excellent radiation detection properties are systematically introduced, containing Pb, Cu, Mn and Sn-based structures, and their key scintillation parameters are comprehensively compared. Furthermore, their applications in X-ray imaging, gamma-ray spectrum measurement, and neutron detection are well discussed. Last, the challenges and opportunities in development of 0D metal halide scintillators towards radiation detection are prospected. In the future, researchers should be committed to providing solutions to the issues such as the growth of large-scale, defect-less and highly transparent single crystals, deep and reasonable explanation of scintillation mechanism, and the creation of standard for the methods of performance measurement towards various kinds of scintillators.

Key words: radiation detection, scintillator, 0D metal halides, scintillation mechanism, review