Thermoluminescence of undoped and Ce-doped BaB4O7

In this paper, the TL dosimetric characteristics of undoped and Ce-doped BaB4O7 compounds are reported. The polycrystalline powder samples were prepared by a melting method and the formation of the compounds were confirmed by an X-ray diffraction study. The TSL studies of undoped BaB4O7 sample show a prominent glow peak at 195 °C and three small peaks at 117, 255 and 365 °C whereas Ce-doped sample show three prominent TL glow peaks at 195, 250, 331 °C and two small peaks at around 90 and 135 °C when heated at a constant heating rate of 1 °C/s. Comparative TSL studies of these two compounds show that the Ce-doped BaB4O7 compound is approximately five times more sensitive than undoped compound. The TL emission spectra of Ce-doped showed a maxima at 360 nm for all measurements during TL measurements which is attributed to the characteristic emission from 5d to 4f transitions of Ce3+ ion. The main dosimetric characteristics, which are namely the TL dose response, TL sensitivity, fading, minimum detectable dose, reproducibility, precision of dose measurement and annealing procedure, were shown that Ce-doped BaB4O7 sample could be used in dosimetric applications. The trap parameters namely order of kinetics (b), activation energy (E) and frequency factor (s) associated with the glow peaks in β-irradiated undoped and Ce-doped barium borate samples were also obtained by computer glow curve deconvolution (CGCD) method.