Influence of thermal treatments on the response decay of glass radiation detectors

Abstract

Commercial transparent glass has received attention in relation to its use as a gamma radiation detector, This kind of material presents a strong post-irradiation thermal decay at room temperature, which is a problem for high dose dosimetry purposes. This effect may be avoided by taking measurements always at the same time after irradiation of the glass samples. However, in this work effort has been given to this material characteristic, submitting the glass samples to different thermal treatments. The best results were obtained with a post-irradiation treatment at 130°C during 10 min. This procedure seems to destroy the unstable entities responsible for the initial strong decay of the sample response, showing acceptable stability as a function of room temperature storage time.