A Course in Luminescence Measurements and Analyses for Radiation Dosimetry. Stephen W. S. McKeever

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Название A Course in Luminescence Measurements and Analyses for Radiation Dosimetry
Автор произведения Stephen W. S. McKeever
Жанр Физика
Серия
Издательство Физика
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9781119646921



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Figures 2.2 and 2.4, is that the radius of the impurity ions generally do not match those of the host ions for which they substitute. For example, the radius of a Mg2+ ion is 86×10–12 m, whereas the radius of Li+ is 90×10–12 m. This small change in radius (<5%) causes a much larger change in ionic volume in that part of the lattice and substituting a Li+ ion with a Mg2+ ion results in a decrease of ionic volume by ~15%. Similarly, Ti4+ results in a ~76% volume decrease, while Y3+ in CaF2 causes a ~69% decrease when substituting for Ca2+. These effects immediately cause lattice distortions over and above distortions due to coulombic forces.1

      It is the breakdown in the lattice periodic potential caused by defects that gives rise to energy levels within the forbidden gap. The wavefunctions of electrons in a crystal with perfect periodicity are delocalized and extend throughout the material. States where the electron wavefunction is localized are not allowed. It is when the periodicity breaks down due to the presence of a defect that localized wavefunctions occur. These decay with distance away from the center of the defect over several lattice sites and the corresponding energies reside within the band gap.

      Whether they are relatively simple defects or complex defects, interactions between the localized electrons and holes can take place either, or both, non-locally (i.e. via the delocalized bands) or locally (e.g. tunneling of charge between localized states) depending upon both the energy and the spatial association between the defects. The energy levels may be discrete (i.e. characterized by a single energy value) or, because of their complexity, can be distributed in energy with the exact energy value depending upon the nature of the surrounding environment and the presence of other defects. This is especially true of non-crystalline materials such as glasses, in which the surrounding lattice may display short- or long-range disorder, resulting in a range of energies for a particular defect type.

      2.1.2 Extended Defects

      In addition to point defects, one can also add even more complex defects consisting of line dislocations (boundaries between slipped and un-slipped lattice planes), grain boundaries, angular misfits between lattice planes, planar dislocations (internal surfaces), nanoparticle formations, inclusions, and precipitates. Another obvious cause of the breakdown in the periodicity of a lattice is the presence of a surface. Crystals are not infinitely large and at a surface the lattice periodicity ends abruptly giving rise to broken bonds and bonds passivated by the possible presence of foreign atoms, resulting in large concentrations of localized levels at the surface. Clearly, powdered materials with small grain sizes and large surface-to-volume ratios are more likely to exhibit effects due to surface states than larger, bulk materials.

      2.1.3 Non-Crystalline Materials

      Figure 2.5 Density of states functions Z(E) for (a) a crystalline solid, and (b) an amorphous (non-crystalline) solid. For non-crystalline materials the density of states extends into the band gap (band-tail states) and localized states (shaded) are distributed in energy.

      It should also be mentioned that even crystalline materials can exhibit band-tail states extending into the gap if they exhibit sufficient lattice disorder due to variations in bond lengths, bond angles, local density fluctuations, and/or contain high concentrations of impurities or other extrinsic defects. If the disorder is sufficiently high, it can give rise to a density of states Z(E) that extends into the band gap. Such materials may include, for example, natural minerals, such as the feldspar family or the various polymorphs of silicon dioxide.

      2.2 Trapping, Detrapping, and Recombination Processes

      2.2.1 Excitation Probabilities

      2.2.1.1 Thermal Excitation

      Consider an electron localized at a lattice defect, at energy Et below the conduction band and probability p that the electron will absorb external energy and be excited from the trap into the conduction band. If the temperature of the system is T, the probability per second p that the electron will be thermally excited into the conduction band is given by:

      where v is the lattice phonon vibration frequency, K is the transition probability constant, k is Boltzmann’s constant, F is the Helmholtz free energy = Et−ΔST, and ΔS is the entropy change associated with the transition. Thus:

      p equals nu upper K exp left-brace StartFraction upper Delta upper S Over k EndFraction right-brace exp left-brace minus StartFraction upper E Subscript t Baseline Over k upper T EndFraction right-brace equals s exp left-brace minus StartFraction upper E Subscript t Baseline Over k upper T EndFraction right-brace period (2.2)

      Here, s is known as the “attempt-to-escape” frequency (also known as the “frequency factor,” or the “pre-exponential factor”), with units of s–1. It is the number of times per second that energy is absorbed from phonons in the lattice, and the term exp{−EtkT} is the probability that the energy absorbed is enough to cause a transition from the localized state to the conduction band. Typically, one can expect s ~ 1012–1014 s–1; that is, of the order of the lattice vibration frequency, v, but differing from it by the