Persistent luminescence dosimetry performance of solid state synthesized BaZrO₃ phosphors

This work reports for the first time on the thermoluminescence (TL) and persistent luminescence (PLu) characterization of BaZrO₃ synthesized through solid state reaction. X-Ray diffraction confirmed the crystalline structure of the synthesized phosphors. The characteristic glow curves of the synthesized samples exhibit TL maxima located at 85 and 165 °C, whose fading after radiation exposure gives rise to intense PLu. PLu decay curves were recorded after beta particle irradiation in the dose range from 1.0 up to 1024 Gy. Both TL and PLu exhibit remarkable reproducibility. The integrated persistent luminescence (IPLu) as a function of the irradiation dose exhibits a linear dependence in the 1.0–16 Gy dose range, followed by a sublinear behavior from 16 to 128 Gy. From the experimental evidence here presented, it is concluded that solid state synthesized BaZrO₃ is an interesting phosphor material to be implemented as a PLu-based detector and dosimeter.