Effect of annealing in thermostimulated luminescence (TSL) on natural blue colour calcite crystals

Abstract

The thermostimulated luminescence (TSL) glow curve characteristics of 10 blue coloured calcite crystals of Southern Tamilnadu are analysed. The natural thermoluminescence (NTL) measurements were carried out for all the samples and annealed in air at the temperatures ranging from 200 to 700 °C, at an interval of 50 °C, for 1 h duration. The glow curves of annealed and unannealed samples irradiated with a gamma dose of 500 Gy show three peaks at 145, 255 and 345 °C, respectively, when recorded with a linear heating rate of 10 °C/s. Annealing treatment above 400 °C increases the sensitivity of all TSL peaks except 345 °C. On the other hand, annealing at 700 °C caused a collapse in the TSL sensitivity. The enhancement in TSL sensitivity was found to depend on the annealing temperature and time. Annealing treatment at 600 °C for 5 h followed by quenching in air is the optimum conditions for TSL sensitization. The response to gamma irradiation is linear in the range from 1 to 10 4 Gy. The emission spectra of all the samples show an emission at around 610 nm but with different intensities for each sample. With reference to earlier work, it may be assumed that the recombination site always involves Mn 2+ ions.