A review on the progress of ZnSe as inorganic scintillator

•Fundamentals of scintillation in inorganic scintillators.•Properties of common inorganic scintillators and discussion of investigations on ZnSe based scintillators.•Factors affecting scintillation performance of ZnSe based scintillators.•Basics of quantum dots, efforts taken for synthesis of ZnSe quantum dots and advantages of ZnSe quantum dot scintillators.