What is the best annealing treatment for LiF dosemeters : some experimental results

Many references in the Literature, when dealing with the problem of TLD annealing, have recommended various solutions, according to the material to be treated. For lithium fluoride, one of the most widely recommended pre-irradiation annealing procedures consists of a two-phase cycle: 1 hour at 400 deg. C (higher temperature phase) and 2 hours at 100 deg. C (lower temperature phase). The aim of this work is to assess whether this method is really the optimum or some variations in temperature or time should be introduced. The parameters considered to evaluate the effectiveness of the annealing were sensitivity (as signal-to-dose ratio) and reproducibility