Thermoluminescence properties of undoped diamond films deposited using HF CVD technique

Abstract

Natural diamond has been considered as a perspective material for clinical radiation dosimetry due to its tissuebiocompatibility and chemical inertness. However, the use of natural diamond in radiation dosimetry has been halted by the high market price. The recent progress in the development of CVD techniques for diamond synthesis, offering the capability of growing high quality diamond layers, has renewed the interest in using this material in radiation dosimeters having small geometrical sizes. Polycrystalline CVD diamond films have been proposed as detectors and dosimeters of β and α radiation with prospective applications in high-energy photon dosimetry. In this work, we present a study on the TL properties of undoped diamond film samples grown by the hot filament CVD (HF CVD) method and exposed to β and α radiation. The glow curves for both types of radiation show similar character and can be decomposed into three components. The dominant TL peaks are centered at around 610 K and exhibit activation energy of the order of 0.90 eV.