Natl. Acad. Sci. Lett.

DOI 10.1007/s40009-015-0351-y

SHORT COMMUNICATION

Thermoluminescence of LiF:Mg,Ti (TLD 100) Subject to 1.25

Mega Electron Volt Gamma Radiotherapy
M. H. Sahini • I. Hossain • M. A. Saeed •

H. Wagiran

Received: 24 December 2013 / Revised: 8 June 2014 / Accepted: 2 January 2015

Ó The National Academy of Sciences, India 2015

Abstract Attempt has been made to investigate the The major benefits of luminescence dosimeter are their
thermoluminescence (TL) of LiF:Mg,Ti (TLD 100) chip high sensitivity, allowing doses as low as 1 lGy to be
irradiated with gamma energies of 1.25 MeV. The TL re- measured, their linear response with dose up to at least
sponse increases over a wide photon dose range, from 1.0 1 Gy, and have peculiar properties [2]. TL materials are
to 10 Gy. The LiF:Mg,Ti demonstrates useful TL proper- available in powder and solid forms. Some of these are
ties and represents as an excellent candidate for use in TL approximately tissue equivalent and, therefore, do not re-
dosimetry of ionizing radiation. TLD 100 dosimeter has quire a filter system to correct for their energy dependence.
been found to yield a linear dose-TL signal relationship. Its This enables a simple basic dosimeter configuration to be
linearity and sensitivity have been observed. The TL high used. In general, detectors of the materials have a detection
sensitivity of TLD 100 makes it a very promising TL threshold suitable for routine dosimetry.
material for use in research and a variety of other Lithium fluoride (LiF) has been by far the most com-
applications. monly used, partly because of its low effective atomic
number (8.14), only slightly greater than that of biological
Keywords Thermoluminescence  LiF:Mg,Ti  tissue (7.4). Thus, it can be considered as tissue equiva-
Dosimetry  Photon  Sensitivity lence. Thermoluminescence of LiF is attributed to the
presence of Mg and Ti impurities. The commercial prod-
ucts marketed by Harshaw are termed as TLD-100, TLD-
Thermoluminescence dosimetry (TLD) has been actively 600 and TLD-700 accordingly to their preparation from
developed and successful to many applications such as natural lithium or lithium enriched with 6Li or 7Li. Re-
clinical radiation medicine, personal and environmental cently, we have investigated TL responses of TLD-100 and
monitoring of ionizing radiation. Among them, the most Ge-and Al-doped SiO2 optical fibres by 6 and 10 MV
widespread is radiation monitoring of personnel working photon and 6, 9 and 12 MeV electron irradiation [3–8].
around sources of ionizing radiations. In recent years, TLD Moreover, we have reported TL response of Yb–Tb-doped
has been used in radiation therapy [1]. The principle of SiO2 optical fibers subject to 6 and 10 MV photon irra-
application of luminescence materials to the dosimetry of diation [9].
ionizing radiation relies on the relationship between the The results from such studies have paved the way in
dose absorbed and the intensity of light emitted [2]. development of the radiation dosimeters specifically TLD
100 relative energy response and dose rate effect. In many
TLD applications, the main purpose is to determine the
M. H. Sahini  M. A. Saeed  H. Wagiran
Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, Universiti Teknologi dose absorbed in human tissue. Megavoltage photons re-
Malaysia, 81310 Skudai, Johor, Malaysia main the most prominent type of radiation source used in
radiotherapy, the energy being chosen to target tumors
I. Hossain (&)
located at different depths [10]. For this reason, it is de-
Department of Physics, Rabigh College of Science & Arts, King
Abdulaziz University, Rabigh 21911, Saudi Arabia sirable that the TLD 100 has an energy response equal to
e-mail: [email protected] that of human tissue. But TL characteristics of TLD100

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 M. H. Sahini et al.

using 1.25 MeV gamma irradiations are hardly observed in 400 °C and subsequently for 2 h at 80 °C. In order to
the open literature. The novelty of this paper is to find the minimize exposure to potentially high ambient light levels,
linearity and sensitivity of TLD 100 chip from 1.0 to 10 Gy after cooling, the samples were placed inside an opaque
dose by 1.25 MeV gamma irradiations. container [6–8].
The TLD material based on LiF phosphor known as The irradiation was performed using gamma cell,
TLD-100 has been used in this study and doped with small Gamma Ray GC 220 EX machine at the School of Applied
quantities of Mg and Ti, which is denoted by LiF:Mg,Ti Physics, Faculty of Science and Technology, Universiti
[5]. TLD-100 contains isotopic constituents of 6Li (7.5 %) Kebangsaan Malaysia. The source of gamma ray irra-
and 7Li (92.5 %). LiF:Mg:Ti contains 73.28 % fluorine, diation used for the gamma cell was Cobalt-60, which was
26.72 % lithium, 200 ppm magnesium, and approximately purchased in 2002 with the original dose rate at 9.234 kGy/
10 ppm titanium. The role of dopants in LiF is well rec- h. Currently the dose rate was at 2.263 kGy/h.
ognized in enhancing TL sensitivity and changing the For gamma ray irradiation, the TLD-100 was placed
structure of glow curves to a near-tissue equivalent TLD. inside the Perspex. The dosimeter was put into the irradi-
The standard measure for the TLD-100 chip was ating chamber of the Gamma Cell. Before the samples
3.2 mm 9 3.2 mm 9 0.89 mm. The standard TLDs were were exposed, the dose and time of irradiation were cal-
manufactured by Harshaws. The details of material culated first. The time of irradiation was set on the digital
preparation were acc. to Yaakob et al. [5] and Yaakob et al. panel of the machine. Once the time has been set for ex-
[6]. posure, push the start button for the gamma ray irradiation.
Annealing process is the thermal treatment used to re- The TL yield was read out by using Harshaw 3500 TL
move any irradiation memory from the TL material. Pre- reader at Nuclear Laboratory, Department of Physics,
heating was performed at 400 °C for a period of 1 h, where Universiti Teknologi Malaysia. A N2 atmosphere was used
the fibres being retained in an alumina container during this to suppress spurious light signals from triboluminescence
period. The TLD-100 chips, the annealing routine was to and also to reduce the oxidation of the heating element.
place these in a stainless steel plate and to anneal for 1 h at The following parameters were used during readout; pre-
heat temperature was 50 °C for 10 s; readout temperature
was 300 °C for 33 s, and heating rate of 10 °C s-1. Finally,
an annealing temperature of 300 °C was applied for 10 s to
sweep out any residual signal [8].
The TL response (nC/mg) as a function of dose (Gy) of
LiF:Mg,Ti (TLD-100) subjected to 1.25 MeV gamma ray
irradiated are plotted in Fig. 1. It is known that a good
dosimeter system should be able to give a linear relation-
ship between TL emission and the absorbed dose mea-
sured. The linearity of the TL materials can be determined
by regression coefficient (R2) value obtained from the
graph of TL response. The change in the TL yield per unit
dose is known as sensitivity. A high sensitivity allows for
determination at a low dose. The sensitivity of the TL
materials can be determined from the slope of the graph.
Each data point of Fig. 1 was obtained by taking the av-
Fig. 1 TL response (nC/mg) of TLD-100 subjected to 1.25 MeV erage of three individual reading. The regression coeffi-
gamma ray irradiation cient (R2) for TLD-100 is 0.9627 and the sensitivity was

Table 1 Sensitivity of TLD-100

Types Dose range (Gy) Sensitivity (nC/mg-Gy) Reference

6 MeV electron 0.2–4.0 158.24 [6]

9 MeV electron 0.2–4.0 164.48 [6]
12 MeV electron 0.2–4.0 167.12 [6]
10.0 MV photon 0.5–4 491.47 [10]
6.0 MV photon 0.5–4 389.33 [10]
1.25 MeV Gamma 1.0–10.0 768.85 Present work

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Thermoluminescence of LiF:Mg,Ti (TLD 100)

This paper demonstrates a number of features for ther-

moluminescence dosimetry of TLD 100 by 1.25 MeV
photon irradiation. The linearity with dose and sensitivity
of TLD-100 were investigated. The sensitivity of TLD 100
is 768.85 nC (mg Gy)-1. It is evident that TLD-100 pro-
vides a spatial resolution, its high sensitivity is useful for
photon radiotherapy dosimetry, it has good linearity of
response.

Acknowledgments The authors would like to thank to Mr. Hasan

Ali, Department of Oncology and Radiation therapy, Hospital Sultan
Ismail, Johor for help in performing the irradiations, the Ministry of
Higher Education (MOHE) for providing a research grant and
Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) for supporting a research
studentship.

Fig. 2 Linearity index, F(D) of TLD-100 for 1.25 MeV gamma ray
irradiation
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