Abstract
Low-energy (80–300 keV) electron beam accelerators are gaining in importance in the radiation processing industry due to their ease of use and wide range of applications (e.g. product surface sterilizations or polymer curing and cross-linking). Due to their very low penetration depth (tens to hundreds of microns), currently used film dosimeters exhibit dose gradients over their thickness and do not resolve the dose response in the first microns of the irradiated material. Hence, the surface dose, defined as the dose in the first micron Dµ, cannot be measured directly. This study presents a polymer material as a dosimeter candidate for high-dose low-energy electron beam irradiations. The readout of the dose-dependent fluorescence intensity, originating from a pararosaniline dye reaction when irradiated, is measured using fluorescence microscopy. So far, no in-depth characterization of the material has been performed, leaving the stability and fluorescence properties of the material not fully optimized. We describe the improvements in polymer composition and the fabrication method, and characterize the material properties in terms of the thermal stability, glass transition temperature, refractive index, hardness, rheological behavior, and water affinity. All of these create a complex set of requirements a polymer needs to fulfill to become an effective dosimeter when measuring using confocal microscopy. The fluorescence readout procedure will be addressed in further studies.
Highlights
Having its beginnings in the 1950s, electron beam (e-beam) industrial processing has been developing rapidly and used extensively in many areas of industry, where there is a need for enhancement of the physical and chemical properties of materials or a reduction of undesirable contaminants [1]
The development of a polymer material for its use as a radiofluorogenic dosimeter consisted of several interrelated steps, and only careful evaluation of each of them allowed for the choice of a final material with the necessary characteristics needed for fluorescence imaging using confocal laser scanning microscopy
The present study characterized a novel polymer material as a dosimeter candidate for high-dose, low-energy electron beam irradiations widely used for product surface sterilizations
Summary
Having its beginnings in the 1950s, electron beam (e-beam) industrial processing has been developing rapidly and used extensively in many areas of industry, where there is a need for enhancement of the physical and chemical properties of materials or a reduction of undesirable contaminants [1]. Low-energy electron beams, which are typically of energies ranging between 80 and 300 keV [2], have found several applications in the radiation processing industry, starting from polymer curing [3], cross-linking of coatings and inks [4] and polymer functionalization by grafting [5], through decontamination of packaging materials [1], up to sterilization of surfaces [6,7] and pharmaceutical components [8]. There, only the external surfaces of, for example, pre-sterilized tubs (of vials or syringes) should be irradiated before they can enter an aseptic filling area. In this way, the production of radiolysis products within the volume of a tub is avoided [12]
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