CVD Diamond Applications as TL Radiation Dosimeters

Abstract

The extraordinary characteristics of chemically vapor deposited (CVD) diamond such as tissue equivalence, radiation hardness, and lack of solubility in water; makes CVD diamond a very promising material for radiation dosimetry applications. Recent investigations have shown that CVD techniques allowed the growing of good quality diamond films in a diversity of substrates to be used in the form of ionization chambers, thermoluminescence (TL) detectors and dosimeters. In the present work, we report on the TL properties of MWCVD diamond exposed to gamma radiation in the 0.05 -10.0 kGy dose range and 43.5 and 81.11 Gy min −1 dose rates. The CVD diamond displays a linear dose behavior and 5% TL cycle reproducibility, without requiring any annealing or thermal treatment before using it as TL dosimeter. In spite of the significant results, some problems remain and a lot of research work is necessary to improve the synthetic material characteristics to optimize the TL radiation dosimeter properties.