Thermal treatments to minimize fading effects of colored glass radiation detectors

Abstract

The use of colored glasses (bronze, brown and green) for high-dose dosimetry in routine procedures and as gamma radiation detectors has been investigated in this study. Different dosimetric techniques were employed using a densitometer, a spectrophotometer, a thermoluminescent reader and an electron paramagnetic resonance system. However, these kinds of samples show a strong post-irradiation thermal decay at room temperature, which is a problem for high-dose dosimetry purposes. This effect may be avoided by always taking measurements of the glass samples after the same post-irradiation time, for example 1 h. In this work, different thermal treatments have been applied to the glass radiation detectors. The influence of post-irradiation thermal treatments on the glass response fading was studied using different kinds of glass samples (bronze, brown and green). This process destroys the unstable color centers of the glass samples that are responsible for the initial strong response decay; after that the response becomes stable at room temperature. The different kinds of glasses show the possibility of their use for high doses of industrial, medical and agricultural applications, with the advantages of very low cost and easy handling.