Optical characterization of samarium-doped fluorophosphate glass for x-ray dosimetry for microbeam radiation therapy at the Canadian Light Source

Microbeam Radiation Therapy (MRT) is an experimental form of radiation treatment which has the potential to improve the treatment of many types of cancer. In MRT, the radiation is applied as a grid by passing the collimated X-ray beam from a synchrotron through a microplane collimator, which is a stack of parallel plates of two materials with dramatically different X-ray transparencies. The peak-to-valley dose ratio (PVDR) is the difference between the dose in the microbeams and the dose delivered between the beams. It is the PVDR that is of biological importance in MRT. Therefore a dosimeter for MRT requires a combination of a large dynamic range for dose response into the kilo-Gray regime, and high spatial resolution on the micron scale. This project characterizes fluorophosphate glasses doped with trivalent samarium ions as a potential valency conversion dosimeter for MRT using the conversion of Sm3+→Sm2+ to measure the delivered dose. Samples irradiated at the Canadian Light Source synchrotron showed X-ray induced conversion that could be optically characterized by changes in the photoluminescence emission spectra to obtain irradiation dose. The conversion efficiency depends almost linearly on the irradiation dose up to 150 Gy and saturates at doses exceeding 1500 Gy. The conversion shows a strong correlation with an observed increase in absorbance of the glass in the range of 200-750 nm. The absorbance increases with X-ray dose and is related to the formation of phosphorous-oxygen hole centers (POHC) and POn electron centers. The presence of these defects within the irradiated glass was determined by examination of the induced optical absorbance and electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectra. The formation of these hole centers along with the conversion of Sm3+→Sm2+ under X-ray irradiation suggests that the X-rays cause the formation of electron-hole pairs in the glass. The electrons are then primarily captured by the Sm3+ ions, becoming Sm2+ ions, with some of the electrons being captured by POn electron centers. The holes are captured by the POHCs. This process can be represented chemically as Sm3+ + e-→ Sm2+ and PO + h+→POHC. The stability of the Sm conversion under illumination was examined using photoluminescence spectra and the stability of the X-ray induced defects was examined via the induced optical absorbance and EPR spectra