Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities Research Fundamentals
46
9
https://eipublication.com/index.php/jsshrf
TYPE
Original Research
PAGE NO.
46-53
DOI
OPEN ACCESS
SUBMITED
22 May 2025
ACCEPTED
18 June 2025
PUBLISHED
20 July 2025
VOLUME
Vol.05 Issue07 2025
COPYRIGHT
© 2025 Original content from this work may be used under the terms
of the creative commons attributes 4.0 License.
Effect of Ag On the
Structural and
Thermoluminescence
Properties of Lithium
Magnesium Borate
Hayder. K. Obayes
Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia,
81310 Skudai, Johor Bahru, Malaysia
Directorate General of Education in Babylon Governorate, Ministry of
Education, Baghdad, 51001, Iraq
Scientific Research Center, National University of Science and
Technology, Nassiriya 6400, Iraq
Abstract:
The thermoluminescence (TL) behavior of a
new type of glass system made up of lithium borate
doped with magnesium oxide and co-doped sliver,
known as LB:Mg/Ag, was examined. The Mg/Ag co-
doped LB glasses can contribute to the development of
high-performance thermoluminescent dosimetry (TLD)
materials for ionizing radiation dose detection and
quantification. We produced the glasses through the
melt-quenching process and then characterized them
to evaluate the influence of dopant concentration
variation on the TL properties. The samples exhibited a
single broad peak ranging between 160 and 190 °C,
with the sample made up of 15 mol% Li, 2 mol% Mg,
and 0.6 mol% Ag displaying an optimum TL response.
Moreover, the glass that contained 0.6 mol% of Ag had
the highest TL intensity. The glass showed minimum
fading, excellent reproducibility and annealing
procedure. The XRD profiles of the samples showed
their true amorphous nature, while the FESEM
morphology displayed their surface homogeneity and
excellent transmittance. These attractive features of
the results may be potential for radiation dosimetry.
Keywords:
Thermoluminescence,
Borate
glass,
Phosphor doped, gold co-doped.
Highlights
•
Two Ag co-doped lithium borate doped with
magnesium oxide were made and characterized.
Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities Research Fundamentals
47
https://eipublication.com/index.php/jsshrf
Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities Research Fundamentals
•
Overall properties of glasses were improved
due to Ag co-doping.
•
TL glow carves of glasses showed a peak around
190 °C.
•
Obtained glasses revealed excellent linearity
index over the entire dose range.
•
Achieved best glass composition may be
potential for radiation dosimeters.
Introduction:
Due to the high cost of the most popular
thermoluminescence dosimeters and also due to some
complications attending its reuse such as permanent
radiation damage effects [1]and the sensitivity to the
temperature of heat treatment [2], our attention was
directed toward new thermoluminescence materials
such as borates. The borates are relatively stable
chemical compounds and respond without serious
problems to attempts to dope them with TL sensitisers
such as the rare earths, copper and manganese ions.
The resultant materials show high sensitivity, linearity
and good storage properties. Also they avoid many of
the earlier problems such as fading, light sensitivity and
humidity sensitivity.
Lithium borate was first investigated as a TLD by
Schulman et al[3]. The material was prepared by
melting Li2CO3 and H3BO3 at 9508C, which is higher
than the melting point of 9178C, then rapidly cooled to
room temperature. The resultant glassy material was
then crystallized by subsequent heating at 6508C. The
dopants were added at the melt stage. Rzyski and
Morato[4], studied the rare earth doped lithium
tetraborate samples in the glassy state by optical
absorption. The preparation and characteristics of
Li2B4O7:Cu phosphor has been investigated by
Takenaga et al[5], using the sintering method. In the
same regard the thermoluminescence properties of
different preparations of lithium borate have been
studied by Wall et al [6]. All the previous work led to a
conclusion that Li2B4O7: Cu shows a unique but
extremely useful TL feature of perfect linearity in its TL
response with dose up to 103 Gy followed by sublinear
behavior without any supralinearity [7].
The current study aims to explore different TL features
and kinetic parameters of dysprosium and phosphor
oxides doped borate glass that is modified by lithium
and Strontium. These features include glow curve,
reproducibility, linearity, sensitivity, fading, effective
atomic number, and kinetic parameters.
METHODS
1 Samples Preparation
Series of Li
4
P(BO
3
)
3
glasses of chemical compositions (85-
x
) H
3
BO
3
+ 15% Li
2
CO+ 2%
Mg
+
x
Ag (
x
= 0. 3 and 0.6
mol%)
were synthesized using melt-quenching technique at
different concentrations of strontium ions then the
optimum composition of strontium (2% Mg), choose for
doped with silver. The powder of the compounds was
weighted and well-mixed using milling machine. The
mixture was melted in an alumina crucible for one hr
using an electric furnace a NabGmbH at a temperature
of 1300 oC. The Li2CO3 (purity 99 +%), H3BO3 (purity
99.98%) and Mg (purity 99.9%), Ag (purity 98%) were
supplied by Syarikat Pustaka Elit, Johor Bahru,
Malaysica. After completion of melting, the liquid glass
was poured and quenched on well-polished pre-heated
steel plate. Then, the samples were annealed at 400 oC
for three hr to eliminate the mechanical stress. The
nominal compositions of the samples are given in
Tables 1
Table 1:
Compositions and coded of co-doped glass samples.
Samples
code
Concentration (mol %)
Li
2
CO
3
Mg
H
3
BO
3
Ag
B1
15
2
82.995
0.3
B2
15
2
82.99
0.6
2 Samples Characterizations
The amorphous nature of all samples is verified using X-
ray
diffraction
(XRD)
measurement
(Siemens
Diffractometer D5000) interfaced with diffraction
software analysis. It uses Cu Kα radiation (λ = 1.54 A)
and operates at 40 kV and 30 mA. The XRD profiles on
powdered samples are collected in the range of 2θ = 5
-
90o at scanning rate of 0.05o/sec. The particle
morphology, purity and the phase homogeneity of
these glasses are analyzed via field emission scanning
electron microscopy (FESEM).
The mixture is pressed at 120 MPa to obtain a
transparent pellet with an approximate thickness of 2.0
mm and diameter 10.0 mm. then samples read with TL
reader 4500 model Harshaw 4500.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities Research Fundamentals
48
https://eipublication.com/index.php/jsshrf
Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities Research Fundamentals
1 X-ray diffraction pattern (XRD)
Figure (1) displays the XRD patterns of synthesized
LBMgAg samples. The complete absence of any sharp
peaks confirm their amorphous nature[8]. Additionally,
the appearance of two peaks around 20-30o and 40-
50o are due to LiBO3 and MgBO3 crystal structures,
respectively.
Figure1:
XRD patterns of doped and Co-doped glass samples.
2 Field emission scan electron microscope (FESEM)
Figures 2: illustrate the FESEM images of undoped and
doped samples. Clear homogeneous morphology in the
absence of any grain is manifested. FESEM image rightly
detected the elements present in such morphology[9].
B1
B2
Figure2: FE-SEM images of Co-doped glass samples
3 Annealing procedure
Annealing is a process to remove all residual TL signals,
to re-establish the TL sensitivity, and to eliminate the
unstable low-temperature glow peaks[10]. The
annealing regimens are different for different TL
materials. To optimize the combination of time and
temperature of the pre-irradiation annealing, four
samples for Co- doped were heated at several
temperatures ranging from100 to 300 oC for a period
of 15
–
60 min, and doses of 50Gy were used. One can
see in Figure 3, that the lowest standard deviation of
there a ding was observed after annealing at 100 oC for
glass samples. All the samples were heated at this
temperature for 60 mints as a standard pre-irradiation
annealing procedure. Figure 4, shows that the highest
reproducibility was achieved with annealing at 100 oC
for 60mints for LBMg:Ag (0.6%Ag mol %)
0
20
40
60
80
100
Intensi
ty (a.u.)
2
q
(deg.)
B1
B2
Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities Research Fundamentals
49
https://eipublication.com/index.php/jsshrf
Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities Research Fundamentals
Figure 3
:
TL response and its standard deviation as functions of the temperature used for pre-
irradiation annealing of the LBMg:Ag (0.6%Ag mol %) glass
Figure 4:
TL glow curves of B2 specimen.
4 Effect of heating rate on the TL response
Thermoluminescence intensity depends on the heating
rate used in the TL measurements[11]. Figure
(5,6)shows the effect of heating rate on the glow curve
and peck intensity for glass samples irradiated to 50Gy
for Co- doped glasses. Both the intensity and the
position of the glow peak depend on the heating
rate.With the heating rate increasing from 1to5 oC s-1,
the intensity grows, however; it decreases at a further
rate increase to 3 oC. likely due to the thermal
quenching effect.
100
150
200
250
300
4200000
4400000
4600000
4800000
5000000
5200000
5400000
Temperature
(
C
ͦ
)
TL intensity
(a.u.)
0.0
0.1
0.2
0.3
0.4
0.5
0.6
0.7
STE
50
100
150
200
250
300
0
1000000
2000000
3000000
4000000
5000000
6000000
TL intensit
y
(nC g
-1
)
Temperature (
o
C)
100oC
200oC
300oC
Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities Research Fundamentals
50
https://eipublication.com/index.php/jsshrf
Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities Research Fundamentals
Figure 5: Effect of the heating rate on the position and intensity of the glow peak of the lithium
magnisum borate co-doped sliver (0.6Ag mol%)
Figure 6: Effect of the heating rate on the position and intensity of the Peak intensity of the lithium
magnisum borate co-doped sliver (0.6Ag mol%)
5 Glow curve
The effects of Ag on the TL intensity of LBMg were
investigated. The effect of different concentration of Ag
on the TL glow curve as shown in Figure 7; displays the
glow curve of the glass sample that show a prominent
peak placed at (190 °C) after 50Gy irradiation. This TL
emission may be attributed to recombination between
the excited electrons from the valence band and the
defects produced after irradiation in the material [12].
the addition of Ag on LBMg (0.6Ag mol%) enhances the
intensity by 1.2 times more than that of LBMg (0.3Ag
mol%). This enhancement synchronized with shifting of
Tm toward high temperature (160 °C) with optimum
intensity at 0.6% of Ag. The reduction in the TL glow
curve intensity beyond 0.6 mol% is majorly ascribed to
the concentration quenching theory [13].
50
100
150
200
250
300
0
1000000
2000000
3000000
4000000
5000000
6000000
7000000
3
o
C/s
5
o
C/s
1
o
C/s
TL i
ntensity
(
nC g
-1
)
Temperature
(
o
C
)
1
2
3
4
5
3500000
4000000
4500000
5000000
5500000
6000000
6500000
Heating raten
(
C
ͦ /s
)
TL intensity
(a.u.)
0.02
0.03
0.04
0.05
0.06
0.07
0.08
0.09
0.10
STE
Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities Research Fundamentals
51
https://eipublication.com/index.php/jsshrf
Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities Research Fundamentals
Figure 7: glow curve of pure LBMg with different concentrations of Ag
where TL(D) is the dose response at a dose(D) and (D_0
)is the lowest dose at which the dose response is
linear[14]. Figure 8 shows the linearity index of current
dosimeters. The ideal TLD material has f(D) equal to 1
in a wide dose range. Our results clearly confirm the
linear behavior.
Figure 8: Dose versus the linearity index f(D) for LBMg0.6Ag
6 Thermal Fading
To determine the thermal fading features of
LBMg0.6Ag a number of proposed samples were
annealed and irradiated with a gamma dose of 50 Gy.
The proposed samples were stored in dark conditions
at room temperature to reduce the effect of
background light[15]. The readouts were started after
24 hours of exposure and continued up to 35 days of
irradiation. All measurements were performed under
the same conditions. The obtained results confirmed a
very small reduction of the TL response during the
elapsed period of time. Figure 9, shows the glass
feeding. The thermal faded for co-doped glass
(LBMg0.6Ag), at the rate of about 6.24 per week, and
23.13 per month. The fading of the proposed dosimeter
was compared with previous studies and it showed
much better result than some previous reports as listed
in Table 2.
50
100
150
200
250
300
0
1500000
3000000
4500000
6000000
TL response
(nA)
Temperature
(
o
C
)
B1
B2
0
1
2
3
0.0
0.5
1.0
1.5
2.0
f(
D
)
Dose (Gy)
Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities Research Fundamentals
52
https://eipublication.com/index.php/jsshrf
Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities Research Fundamentals
Table 2: The results on fading from earlier studies
Materials
Fading
Reference
LBMg0.6Ag
23.13 after 30 days
This study
Saidu et al., 2014
17% after 15 days
[16]
Figure 9: Thermal fading of the response of lithium magnesium borate co-doped silver. Dose
50 Gy.
7 Reproducibility
Ten samples of the material were repeatedly irradiated
to 50Gy (with the proper preliminary annealing), and
their signals were measured after each irradiation.
Figure 10, shows the results of co-doped glasses. The
average sensitivity of the samples was decreasing
slowly at approximately 1.7% per cycle (the relative
standard deviations of the signals of replicate
dosimeters were below 2%). This result indicates that
LBMg:0.6Ag is a reusable dosimetric material.
Figure 10: Reproducibility test after 10 times of repeated cycles for LBMg0.6Ag exposed to
50 Gy
CONCLUSION
Significant dosimetric features for a newly proposed TL
dosimeter were determined. The current study
exhibited promising results for borate glass modified by
lithium and magnesium and co-doped with silver were
prepared by the melt quenching method. This
enhancement is ascribed to the ability of Ag to create
0
15
30
45
60
60
80
100
Re
sidu
al signal (%)
Storage time (days)
0
2
4
6
8
10
0.0
0.5
1.0
1.5
2.0
No
rmal
ized
TL i
ntensit
y (a
.u.)
Number of measurement
Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities Research Fundamentals
53
https://eipublication.com/index.php/jsshrf
Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities Research Fundamentals
new electron traps and activate the ground state of the
luminescence centers by raising the energy levels of the
surrounding oxygen ions to the top of the valence band.
The material features a simple glow curve with a single
prominent peak at 190 oC; its annealing procedure is
simple and the thermal fading of its signal is slow. A
good dose response linearity and reproducibility of
signals are also provided. These characteristics make Ag
co-doped lithium magnesium borate very suitable for
for ionizing radiation dosimetry.
Acknowledgements
The author(s) would like to thank the Malaysian
Ministry of Education (MOE) and Universiti Teknologi
Malaysia for providing the financial support and
facilities for this research, under Grant No.
R.J130000.7826.4F490. farther more would like to
thank the UTM for sport by IDF reference
UTM.J.10.01/13.14/1/128.
REFERENCES
Bhatt, B.C., Thermoluminescence, optically stimulated
luminescence and radiophotoluminescence dosimetry:
an overall perspective. Radiation protection and
environment, 2011. 34(1): p. 6-16.
Efenji,
G.,
et
al.,
Structural
properties
of
thermoluminescence
dosimeter
materials,
preparation, application, and adaptability: a systematic
review. Journal of Applied Sciences and Environmental
Management, 2024. 28(4): p. 1129-1150.
Schulman, J., R. Kirk, and E. West, USE OF LITHIUM
BORATE FOR THERMOLUMINESCENCE DOSIMETRY.
1967, Naval Research Lab., Washington, DC.
Rzyski, B. and S. Morato, Luminescence studies of rare
earth doped lithium tetraborate. Nuclear Instruments
and Methods, 1980. 175(1): p. 62-64.
Takenaga, M., O. Yamamoto, and T. Yamashita,
Preparation and characteristics of Li 2 B 4 O 7: Cu
phosphor. Nuclear Instruments and Methods, 1980.
175(1): p. 77-78.
Wall, B., et al., The suitability of different preparations
of thermoluminescent lithium borate for medical
dosimetry. Physics in medicine and biology, 1982.
27(8): p. 1023.
Srivastava, J. and S. Supe, The thermoluminescence
characterisation of Li2B4O7 doped with Cu. Journal of
Physics D: Applied Physics, 1989. 22(10): p. 1537.
Palan, C., et al., Synthesis and luminescence properties
of Tb 3+-doped LiMgPO 4 phosphor. Bulletin of
Materials Science, 2016. 39: p. 1157-1163.
Makhtar, S.N.N.M., N.K. Abd Hamed, and M.A.H. bin
Hamdan, Morphological analysis of photocatalytic
membrane (SEM, FESEM, TEM), in Advanced Ceramics
for Photocatalytic Membranes. 2024, Elsevier. p. 221-
238.
Yang, Z., et al., Passive dosimeters for radiation
dosimetry: materials, mechanisms, and applications.
Advanced Functional Materials, 2024. 34(41): p.
2406186.
Topaksu, M., et al., Effect of heating rate on the
thermoluminescence and thermal properties of natural
ulexite. Applied Radiation and Isotopes, 2015. 95: p.
222-225.
Alshoaibi, A., et al., Effect of Mg on the structural,
optical and thermoluminescence properties of Li3Al3
(BO3) 4: shift in main glow peak. Molecules, 2023.
28(2): p. 504.
AB HAMID, N.F.S.B., EFFECT OF COBALT-60 RADIATION
ON THERMOLUMINESCENCE PROPERTIES OF COPPER
DOPED AND TERBIUM DOPED SODIUM MAGNESIUM
BORATE. 2018.
Harvey, J.A., K.J. Kearfott, and M. Rafique, Dose
response linearity and practical factors influencing
minimum
detectable
dose
for
various
thermoluminescent detector types. Journal of
Radioanalytical and Nuclear Chemistry, 2015. 303: p.
1711-1718.
Fu, L., et al., Fading performance on optically
stimulated luminescence of LiMgPO4: Tb, Sm, B.
Radiation Measurements, 2024. 175: p. 107165.
Saidu, A., et al., Thermoluminescence characteristics of
zinc lithium borate glass activated with Cu+ (ZnO
–
Li2O
–
B2O3: Cu+) for radiation dosimetry. Journal of
Radioanalytical and Nuclear Chemistry, 2014: p. 1-6.
