Modern Approaches in the Synthesis of Optically Stimulated Luminescent (OSL) Materials for Dosimetry Applications

Optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) has emerged as a versatile and powerful technique for dosimetry, dating, and material characterization in various scientific disciplines. They are widely used in various applications, including radiation therapy, environmental monitoring, and personal dosimetry. OSL materials have several advantages over traditional dosimeters, including high sensitivity, high spatial resolution, and high accuracy. Additionally, the integration of micro-OSL techniques has allowed for the precise analysis of small-scale samples, opening up new avenues in micro-dosimetry and nanodosimetry. OSL chips are used in the radiotherapy in the total body irradiation (TBI) for dose measurement in dual-source dual-energy computed tomography. As a result, there has been a great deal of interest in developing new and modern approaches such as sol-gel method, hydrothermal synthesis, microwave-assisted synthesis, co-precipitation method, and chemical vapor deposition (CVD) method to synthesize OSL materials. In dating applications, OSL has witnessed breakthroughs in both methodology and accuracy, enabling the precise determination of ages for a wider range of geological and archeological samples. In this work, we discuss all these abovementioned synthesis techniques of OSL in detail along with their important properties, current detection methods, and important applications. Current limitations and future challenges of OSL dosimetry have also been highlighted due to wide ranges of applications in all domains of science including radiation protection and radiation therapy.