Consequences of doping Er3+ and Yb3+ ions on the thermoluminescence dosimetry performance of the BaO-ZnO-LiF-B2O3-Sm2O3 glass system

The consequences of doping Er ³⁺ and Yb ³⁺ ions on the thermoluminescence (TL) dosimetry performance of the BaO-ZnO-LiF-B ₂O ₃-Sm ₂O ₃ glass system were examined for the first time. The incorporation of Er ³⁺ and Yb ³⁺ ions were found to be highly detrimental to the TL intensity, sensitivity, and trap density of the Sm ³⁺ doped glass. Although Sm ³⁺ ions enhanced the integrated TL intensity of the host glass by two thousand times, Sm ³⁺-Er ³⁺ and Sm ³⁺-Yb ³⁺ combinations functioned like activator-quencher systems. Contrary, the problem of anomalous loss of 50% signal after a storage week of the Sm ³⁺ doped glass was effectively countered by doping Er ³⁺ (2% loss) and Yb ³⁺ (8% loss) ions. From the trap parameters, the elimination of some shallow traps and deepening of some existing ones was reasoned for minimizing fading. Even if the Er ³⁺ and Yb ³⁺ ions adversely affected the TL intensity of the Sm ³⁺ glass, they greatly improved the stability. The observations indicate that the TL dosimetry performance of a glass system can be suitably tuned by the doping/co-doping of rare-earth ions.