  Scintillation materials convert high-energy radiation to optical light
through a complex multi-stage process. The last stage of the process is light
emission via spontaneous emission, which usually governs and limits the
scintillator emission rate and light yield. For decades, the quest for faster
emission rate and greater light yield motivated the frontier of scintillators
research to focus on developing better materials and dopants. Here, we
experimentally demonstrate a fundamentally different, recently proposed concept
for enhancing the scintillation rate and yield: the Purcell effect. The Purcell
effect is a universal enhancement mechanism for spontaneous emission by
engineering the optical environment. In scintillators, such an enhancement
arises from engineering the nanoscale geometry within the scintillation bulk,
which thus applies universally to any scintillating material and dopant. We
design and fabricate a thin multilayer nanophotonic scintillator, demonstrating
Purcell-enhanced scintillation, achieving a 50% enhancement in emission-rate
and an 80% enhancement in light yield. We demonstrate the potential of our
device for realizing these enhancements in real-life settings for X-ray
applications, also due to the robustness of the nanophotonic design to
fabrication disorder. Our results show the bright prospects of bridging
nanophotonics and scintillators science, toward reduced radiation dosage and
increased resolution for high-energy particles detection.
