Precise thermoluminescence glow curve analysis of BeO ceramic plates with slow heating rates

Abstract

The glow curve components and thermoluminescence (TL) parameters of BeO ceramics plates with high bioequivalence were analyzed using extremely slow heating rates. Thermalox 995 was used as the BeO ceramic plates, which is a material with a BeO content of 99.5% or higher. The size of the plates was 10 × 10 × 0.7 mm³ with a density of 2.85 g/cm³, and an effective atomic number of 7.13. A linear accelerator was used for irradiation of the BeO plates at 5 Gy of 6 MV X-rays. After irradiation, the TL glow curve was measured using an in-house developed measurement instrument; the TL intensity was recorded from 50 to 400 °C with heating rates of 0.133, 0.05, and 0.005 °C/s used in three patterns. General-order kinetics were used for the theoretical analysis, which takes recapture into account. After irradiation, post-annealing was performed in the range of 50 to 350 °C at 50 °C intervals, and component analysis of the glow curves was also performed. The TL parameters were calculated from glow curves measured up to a heating rate that was three orders of magnitude slower than that previously measured. The activation energy and frequency factor for the main glow component at low temperatures were 1.15 eV and 1.11 × 10¹¹/s, respectively, while those for the main glow component at high temperatures were 1.74 eV and 8.65 × 10¹³/s. The glow peak for the BeO ceramic plates were also determined have a low TL intensity component in close proximity to these two glow components. Furthermore, an increase in TL efficiency was observed when the glow curve was measured using an extremely slow heating rate. This may be due to a change of the carriers from TL-inactive when the glow curve is measured with a fast heating rate to TL-active with a longer thermal excitation time.