The kinetic parameters of the main thermoluminescence glow peak of Al2O3:C,Mg: A critical evaluation of different analytical methods

Abstract

Carbon and magnesium co-doped aluminum oxide (Al2O3:C,Mg) is a highly sensitive luminescence dosimeter with promising use in a wide spectrum of radiation-related applications, including neutron dosimetry and as a fluorescent nuclear track detector (FNTD). The goal of this work is to critically evaluate diverse methods and approaches for the determination of the kinetic parameters using Al2O3:C, Mg as a case study. Al2O3:C, Mg was beta irradiated with doses from 0.1 to 0.6 Gy. Besides thermoluminescence (TL) peaks at 325, 350, and 375 K, the analysis of the activation energy, frequency factor and order of kinetics focused exclusively on the main TL peak at 450 K. Analysis by curve fittings used a number of freeware, namely, Glowfit, TLAnal, the Thermoluminescence Glow Curve Deconvolution (TGCD) package, and the spreadsheet TLDecoxcel. The results from the computational approaches were compared with results obtained by analyzing experimental data using conventional methods as initial-rise, whole glow peak, variable heating rate and peak shape. The performance of the computational methods is satisfactory as the values found are consistent with the ones determined by the methods listed above.