Annealing Kinetics of Ti- and Ge-Related Centers in Quartz

Abstract

Radiation defects in quartz are widely used in trapped charge chronometry. Analytical function which simulates dose–response curve is a very important for the correct measurement of equivalent dose. Ge- and Ti-related centers in quartz which may be used in electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) dating have non-monotonic dose–response curves. In addition to accumulation, very significant parameter of radiation centers is their thermal stability. Obtained in this work results show that increase of concentration of paramagnetic Ge- and Ti-centers in quartz at the beginning of annealing may be explained by the existence of electron centers with two captured electrons which are not detected with used EPR spectrometer. Proposed model of formation and recombination processes satisfactorily simulates the experimental data—the dose dependencies and isothermal annealing data. It also explains why first- or second-order kinetics used in previous investigations cannot simulate annealing dependences correctly.