Investigation of thermally stimulated luminescence characteristics of synthetic and natural quartz

Quartz is one of the most important synthetic and natural crystals used in thermally stimulated luminescence studies, shortly named thermoluminescence (TL), and TL age estimation of historical samples which include the quartz minerals. Natural quartz minerals are highly found in the crust of the earth, the historical vestiges and meteors. It exhibits a number of TL peaks when quartz is heated from room temperature to 500oC. In this work, thermally stimulated luminescence characteristics of synthetic quartz which is purchased from Aldrich Company and natural quartz extracted from ceramics of Kubad Abad palace, Beyşehir, Konya, Turkey were carried out for different aims. The first aim was to see the stabilities of TL peak intensities and kinetic parameters of synthetic and natural quartz at different annealing temperatures. The second aim was to investigate the effects of thermal treatments on the TL intensity and kinetic parameters of natural quartz. The thermoluminescence dose responses of synthetic and natural quartz after different annealing protocols and the effects of heating rates on the thermoluminescence characteristics of synthetic and natural quartz constitute the third and fourth aim of this thesis, respectively.