Thermoluminescence characterisation of chemical vapour deposited diamond films

The thermoluminescence (TL) characteristics of a set of six chemical vapour deposited diamond films have been studied with regard to their use as off-line dosimeters in radiotherapy. The structural characterisation has been performed by means of Raman spectroscopy. Their TL responses have been tested with radiotherapy beams (60Co photons, photons and electrons from a linear accelerator (Linac), 26 MeV protons from a TANDEM accelerator) in the dose range 0.1–7 Gy. simetric characterisation has yielded a very good reproducibility, a very low dependence of the TL response on the type of particle and independence of the radiation energy. The TL signal is not influenced by the dose rate and exhibits a very low thermal fading. Moreover, the sensitivity of the diamond samples compares favourably with that of standard TLD100 dosimeters.