Analysis of fading characteristics of quartz sand as a dosimeter and in irradiation identification applications

Fading characteristics of the thermoluminescent (TL) signal from laboratory fine quartz sand was studied in the temperature range from ambient to 150 oC. Glow curves were unfolded by an iterative, non-linear regression of superimposed Gaussian distributions. The activation energy for the fading of the first peak was estimated at 6 kJ/mol; the temperature range studied was not sufficient to estimate activation energies of the other two peaks. These peaks appearing at higher glow-curve temperatures are relatively stable during prior storage at room temperature (for several weeks) and are suitable for dosimetric purposes as well as for certain identification applications. (author)