Thermoluminescence characteristics of Cu 2 O doped Calcium Lithium borate glass irradiated with the cobalt-60 gamma rays Ismail Rammadhan a,b,n , Saddon Taha b , H. Wagiran a a Department of Physics, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 Skudai, Johor, Malaysia b Department of Physics, Faculty of Sciences and Health, Koya University, Danielle Mitterrand Boulevard, Koya 45, Kurdistan Region, Iraq article info Article history: Received 20 December 2016 Accepted 10 February 2017 Available online 13 February 2017 Keywords: Thermoluminescence dosimetry Glow curve Concentration Borate glass abstract The aim of this study is to prepare and investigate the thermoluminescence characteristics for the un- doped and Cu 2 O doped calcium lithium borate glass upon adding various Cu 2 O concentrations of 0.005% to 0.1 mol%. The glasses were prepared by melt quenching method and irradiated with 60 CO gamma-ray having different doses in the range of (0.5–4) Gy, (5–10) Gy, and (20–100) Gy. The amorphous phases were identified for optimization glass samples, effect of heating rate, glowing curves, linearity, sensitivity, fading, reproducibility of response and minimum detectable dose are also studied. The TL sample with 0.02 mol% Cu 2 O concentration has higher response compared to the other samples concentration for a delivered dose of 50 Gy, The recorded glow curves consist a dominant peak at 187 °C for a heating rate of 5 °Cs 1 . However, the value of effective atomic number Z eff is 8.84 for 0.02Cu 2 O doped which are near to the atomic number of soft tissue. & 2017 Published by Elsevier B.V. 1. Introduction Thermoluminescence Dosimetry (TLD) has been widely applied in the areas of clinical, personal and environmental monitoring of ionizing radiation. It is an important science, in which normally very low radiation doses need to be measured and to be in a fast, simple and easy way. Several research works have been conducted to find a better dosimeter material. Borates are chosen because of its near tissue equivalent absorption coefficient (Z eff ¼ 7.42), easy preparation, low cost and high sensitivity compared to other TL materials [6,7]. This enables the measurement of the absorbed dose in the tissue exposed to ionizing radiation. Usually the doped thermoluminescence material gives good thermoluminescence signal compared to the un-doped thermoluminescence material. The doping introduces the defects in the matrix that help to en- hance the thermoluminescence signal. The objective of this study is to investigate new material based on borate glasses combined with calcium, lithium and doped with copper which can be used for thermoluminescence dosimeter. In this work, glass has been chosen as the structure of phosphor as it has been revealed to be used as a thermoluminescence dosimeter. 2. Material and methods Calcium lithium borate (CLB) glasses in the system (90-x) H 3 BO 3 –10Li 2 CO 3 –xCaCO 3 with x ¼ 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30 and 35 mol% were prepared using melt- quenching method. The glasses were doped with different concentrations of Cu 2 O with compositions (80-y) H 3 BO 3 –10Li 2 CO 3 –10Ca CO 3 –y Cu 2 O and y ¼ 0.005, 0.01, 0.02, 0.04, 0.06, 0.08 and 0.1 mol%.The materials were obtained in powdered form from Sigma - Aldrich Company, Germany, with purities of 99%. The precursors were weighed using high sensitive electronic balance (Precisa XT 220A), and they were mixed by utilizing milling machine for 30 min in an alumina crucible. The samples were melted in electric furnace for 60 min at 1300 °C. As the required viscosity was achieved, the melt was quenched on stainless steel plates followed by annealing at 400 °C for 3 h in another furnace. Later on, the samples were cooled down to room temperature. This was done to reduce the thermal stress. The electric furnaces used were available at the Nuclear Laboratory, Department of Physics- University Technology Malaysia. The compositions of the prepared samples are illustrated in Tables 1 and 2. In order to check the amorphous state of the samples, X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis was carried out. Energy dispersive X-ray (EDX) analysis was performed to measure the composition of elements present in Cu 2 O doped (CLB) glasses that consequently lead to the determination of effective atomic number (Z eff ) of these samples. The samples were irradiated at room temperature using 60 Co gamma - rays source, the source is a gamma cell 220 Excel Contents lists available at ScienceDirect journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jlumin Journal of Luminescence http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jlumin.2017.02.026 0022-2313/& 2017 Published by Elsevier B.V. n Corresponding author at: Department of Physics, Faculty of Sciences and Health, Koya University, Danielle Mitterrand Boulevard, Koya 45, Kurdistan Region, Iraq. E-mail address: ismail.rammadhan@koyauniversity.org (I. Rammadhan). Journal of Luminescence 186 (2017) 117–122