Study of the thermoluminescence dosimetric properties of window glass

Abstract

This paper presents the main thermoluminescence (TL) dosimetric characteristics of commercial Turkish transparent window glass. The structure of the glow curves, including the number of peaks, was found to be dose-dependent. A low-temperature glow peak that at 160 °C shifts to higher temperatures was also observed with increasing storage time at room temperature. This result suggests that this TL glow peak is actually made up of two or more overlapping peaks. These we have attributed to the glow peaks at lower temperatures, which decay faster than the ones at higher temperatures with storage time. The thermal fading of the window glass sample at room temperature showed a relatively sharp decay of about 60% occurring over a period of 28 days, after which the decay rate is small for a measured period of 250 days. In order to the improve the post-irradiation stability of the glow curve, the glass samples were heated after irradiation. To remove the unstable TL peaks responsible for the initial rapid fading, post-irradiation heating at 160 °C for 10 min was found to be the most suitable procedure. The dosimetric characteristics of the post-irradiation heated window glass examined in this study include fading, gamma photon dose-response, reproducibility, batch sensitivity, humidity influence, a dose-rate effect and photon energy response. Dose-response was found to be appropriate for dosimetry in the range 5 Gy to 10 kGy. The post-irradiation heating procedure did not affect the main dosimetric characteristics of the window glass samples. The results in this work suggest that the materials could, by using the TL technique, be a suitable candidate for alternative dose measurements in radiation processing, provided that a judicious choice of the post-irradiation heat temperature is made to minimize fading.