On the validity of the general order kinetics for analyzing phosphorescence curves

•The general order kinetics does not yield reliable parameters when the quasi-equilibrium approximation does not hold.•The general order kinetics yields more reliable parameters if it is employed for analyzing glow curves.•The general order kinetics yields reliable parameters if the kinetics is of first order.

The parameters characterizing trap and recombination centers, such as activation energies, recombination and trap probabilities, involved in thermoluminescent materials can be found by analyzing phosphorescence curves with an adopted model consisting of trap and recombination centers, and assuming the mechanisms involved in the carrier traffic (kinetics). Nowadays the most employed kinetics is the General Order kinetics (GO). Since this model is heuristic, this article reports how successful it is in providing reliable values for the traps parameters. The equations describing the traffic of carriers were used to generate simulated phosphorescence curves for specific values of trap and recombination parameters. These simulated phosphorescence curves were later analyzed with the GO kinetics, and the resulting parameters compared to the correct ones in order to evaluate the validity of the model.