GCAFIT—A new tool for glow curve analysis in thermoluminescence nanodosimetry

Abstract Glow curve analysis is widely used for dosimetric studies and applications. Therefore, a new computer program, GCAFIT, for deconvoluting first-order kinetics thermoluminescence (TL) glow curves and evaluating the activation energy for each glow peak in the glow curve has been developed using the MATLAB technical computing language. A non-linear function describing a single glow peak is fitted to experimental points using the Levenberg–Marquardt least-square method. The developed GCAFIT software was used to analyze the glow curves of TLD-100, TLD-600, and TLD-700 nanodosimeters. The activation energy E obtained by the developed GCAFIT software was compared with that obtained by the peak shape methods of Grossweiner, Lushchik, and Halperin–Braner. The frequency factor S for each glow peak was also calculated. The standard deviations are discussed in each case and compared with those of other investigators. The results show that GCAFIT is capable of accurately analyzing first-order TL glow curves. Unlike other software programs, the developed GCAFIT software does not require activation energy as an input datum; in contrast, activation energy for each glow peak is given in the output data. The resolution of the experimental glow curve influences the results obtained by the GCAFIT software; as the resolution increases, the results obtained by the GCAFIT software become more accurate. The values of activation energy obtained by the developed GCAFIT software a in good agreement with those obtained by the peak shape methods. The agreement with the Halperin–Braner and Lushchik methods is better than with that of Grossweiner. High E and S values for peak 5 were observed; we believe that these values are not real because peak 5 may in fact consist of two or three unresolved peaks. We therefore treated E and S for peak 5 as an effective activation energy, E eff , and an effective frequency factor, S eff . The temperature value for peak 5 was also treated as an effective quantity, T m eff .