On the Glow Curve Shape and the Plateau Test. The Case of Second-Order Kinetics

The characteristics of some numerically computed second-order thermoluminescence (TL) peaks are investigated by studying the variation of some of their important parameters like the peak temperature (Tm), the intensity at the peak maximum (Im), the shape factor (μg), etc. as a function of the fractional filling (f = no/N), where no is the number of electrons trapped and N the total number of electron traps present. The implications of these findings are discussed keeping the problem of glow-curve alignment for plateau test which has become an accepted practice in TL dating. It is pointed out that a good plateau is not observed irrespective of whether the peak shifting is small or large, which questions the validity of peak alignment method.