TLD Instrumentation: A Case Study of PC Controlled TL Reader

Abstract

Thermoluminescence reader is an important tool and a requisite for a researcher to study and characterize Thermoluminescence (TL) materials in different forms. Requirement for a versatile PC Controlled TL Reader has been felt for quite some time globally. Nucleonix Systems, Hyderabad, India, have developed a PC Controlled TL Reader by integrating complete electronics hardware circuits (comprising of Power Electronics, Low/High voltage Supplies, Temperature Controller, Micro Controller based data acquisition circuits having serial counter, ADC, DAC, EEPROM, PMT, PMT housing, sample heating system, drawer assembly, etc.) in a single enclosure. The system also integrated with software to calculate the activation energy (E), frequency factor (S) and order of kinetics ‘1’ for the prominent glow peaks using different equations.This Integral TL Reader unit gets connected to the Personal Computer System through serial port RS232C/USB port. The user interface to the system is through front–end VB software defined Graphics User Interface (GUI). The system also contains some of the software features like glow curve acquisition, analysis, filing, printing, plotting, overlapping, maker data reporting, etc. Additionally, system facilitates single/two/three plateau heating with variable heating rates.The primary objective of this development is to bring out versatile TL instrumentation system and also to make it affordable to many of the researchers in the Universities and other areas, including Radio-therapist, Medical Physicists in Cancer Hospitals. This system has been evaluated for its performance with CaSO4: Dy discs, powder, as well as with LiF: Mg, Ti chips. Linearity and reproducibility have been found to be quite satisfactory also within +2%. This system is quite useful to study the TL of phosphor, minerals and characterization of various solid semiconducting materials, and also can be used in personal dosimetry measurements and research studies in medical dosimetry, environmental radiation monitoring, and host of other applications in R&D Labs., etc.