Assessment of CVD diamond as a thermoluminescence dosemeter material

Diamond has a low atomic number (Z = 6) and is therefore essentially soft tissue (Z = 7.4) equivalent. As such, diamond is an attractive material for applications in dosimetry in which the radiation absorption in the sensor material should be as close as possible to that of soft tissue. Synthetic diamond prepared by chemical vapour deposition (CVD) offers an attractive option for this application. The aim of the present work is to report results on the thermoluminescence (TL) properties of CVD diamond samples. The annealing procedure, the linearity of the TL response as a function of dose, a short-term fading experiment and some kinetic properties have been investigated and are reported here.