Characterization of thermoluminescence of chip cards for emergency dosimetry

Reflections on the future developments of research in retrospective physical dosimetry

“…The ubiquity of mobile and electronic devices and especially of cell phones makes their components potentially powerful fortuitous dosimeters: the glass of the touchscreen displays and screen protectors; the aluminium or other metal oxides in the so-called surface mount devices (SMD), which include surface mount resistors (SMR), inductors (IND), and capacitors (CAP); and the material (filler) used to encapsulate microchips within an integrated circuit (IC) package [117]. Radiation sensitive filler material is also used to encapsulate chips found inside credit cards, electronic identity cards, and SIM cards [88,97,118]. Fig.…”

“…(continued on next page) P. Fattibene et al Some chip cards are not radiation sensitive using TL [97]. Detection limits (OSL) can vary significantly between different types of chip cards [88].…”

“…Preheating in OSL or use of TL have been attempted to obtain a more stable signal, but high BGS (up to tens of Gy), signal recuperation and sensitivity change after the first reading were observed [97,146].…”

“…Within a same class of personal items, dosimetric properties vary with the specific type of the materials under study; for example, the fading rate changes with the model of chip card [88,97], and different glass types exhibit different line shape and stability of the background signal (BGS) in EPR [51]. It would be useful to associate the properties of paramagnetic and luminescent centres with the chemical composition and manufacturing processes of the material type under study.…”

The 2019–2020 EURADOS WG10 and RENEB Field Test of Retrospective Dosimetry Methods in a Small-Scale Incident Involving Ionizing Radiation

“…Biological and physical retrospective dosimetry include both recognized and emergent methods (1,2) to reconstruct radiation doses after exposure to assist in triage and treatment of exposed individuals, and to increase knowledge about an exposure scenario for epidemiology and research. For physical retrospective dosimetry, fortuitous materials such as mobile phone electronic components (3)(4)(5)(6)(7)(8), display glass (9)(10)(11)(12)(13)(14)(15), LCD and touch screen glass (11,(16)(17)(18)(19)(20)(21), chip cards (7,(22)(23)(24)(25)(26)(27), ceramics (28)(29)(30), desiccants (31), textiles (32,33), cigarettes (34), household salt (35)(36)(37)(38)(39), and many more have been investigated as possible materials for application in radiological accident dosimetry [see (40,41)]. The 2019 ICRU report, no.…”