Dosimetric properties in Cu-doped silica glasses synthesized by the spark plasma sintering method

Abstract

We synthesized SiO2 glasses doped with various concentrations of Cu (0.001, 0.005, 0.01, and 0.05 mol %) by the spark plasma sintering (SPS) method, and investigated optical, scintillation, and dosimetric properties. The Cu-doped samples indicated photoluminescence (PL) due to the 3d103d94s1 transition of Cu+ at around 500 nm under an excitation at 270 nm. The 0.005 % Cu-doped sample showed the highest PL quantum yield (QY) among the present samples, and the QY was 34 %. The decay time constants ascribed to the PL from Cu+ were 4752 and 121124 ¯s. The scintillation and thermally-stimulated luminescence (TSL) peaks were observed to be due to Cu+ as well as PL. The TSL glow curves of all the samples showed two glow peaks around 130 and 300 °C. In TSL dose response functions, the 0.005 and 0.01 % Cu-doped samples showed detection limit of 0.1 mGy.