Thermoplastic Membranes Incorporating Semiconductive Metal-Organic Frameworks: An Advance on Flexible X-ray Detectors.

: Semiconductive metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) recently emerge in the applications of chemical sensors, electrocatalysts, energy storage materials and electronic devices. However, trials of semiconductive MOFs for flexible electronics have yet to be implemented. Herein, we present a new generation of flexible X-ray detectors through thermoplastically dispersing a heavy metal based semiconductive MOFs ( SCU-13 ) within commercially available polymers (poly(vinylidene fluoride), PVDF). The semiconductive MOF based flexible detectors exhibit efficient X-ray-to-electric current conversion with enhanced charge-carrier mobility and low trap density over the pelleted devices. A superior X-ray detection sensitivity of 65.86 µCGy air -1 cm -2 is achieved, which notably outperforms the pelleted devices and more importantly the commercial flexible X-ray detectors. Furthermore, we demonstrate that MOFs based flexible detectors can be operated under multiple bending angles without deteriorating detection performance. As a further proof-of-concept, an X-ray phase contrast under bending condition is further reconstructed using a 5 × 5 pixelated MOF based imager.