Optically stimulated luminescent materials

During the last two decades optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) technique has become more popular as an alternative option to the conventional thermoluminescence (TL) in the field of passive radiation dosimetry. The principal of OSL technique is to stimulate an X-ray/gamma-ray/beta irradiated sample with light of selected wavelength and to monitor the emission from the sample at a different wavelength. This optical readout process in OSL method does not involve problems of blackbody radiation and thermal quenching that are faced by the TLDs. OSL has many other advantages over the TLD based dosimetry system like fast and multiple readouts, ease in dose estimation and flexibility offered by multitude of possible stimulation protocols. Due to these advantages, OSL is also being used for various applications in radiation dosimetry, such as personnel and environmental monitoring, retrospective/accident dosimetry, medical and space dosimetry, etc.(author)