Response of thermoluminescent detectors to charged particles and to neutrons

Thermoluminescent detectors (TLDs) are widely used for the dosimetry of photons and electrons. They are less used for the radiation with higher linear energy transfer (LET). One of the reasons for that is that their TL relative efficiency eta decreases for the most of them with increasing LET. The paper presents first a review of author's experimental results in which eta was established for charged particles having LET of the order from 1 to 100 keV/micrometers in tissue. Among TLDs studied were known materials like LiF:Mn; Ti; Al-P glass; CaSO4:Dy; Al2O3:Na; and Al2O3:C. It was found that the dependence of their eta on LET is not the same for all TLDs studied. The response of the same materials to neutrons was also studied. It was found that both eta as the relative response (RR) defined in terms of absorbed dose in tissue are different, they depend critically also on the composition. When a TLD contains nuclei like 6Li and 10B, their RR would be rather high. As far as eta is concerned, the same tendencies were observed as for charged particles, i.e. when average LET of secondary particles formed in a TLD increases, their eta generally decreases.