  Thermal detectors have recently achieved a leading position in the fields of
neutrinoless double beta decay and dark matter searches thanks to excellent
energy resolution and numerous absorber material choices. These detectors
operate at temperatures of a few mK and do not have dead layers. Contaminations
on the surface of faced materials have thus to be taken into account as sources
of background. We propose a scintillation-based approach for rejecting surface
background and discuss the innovative application of this technique in
non-scintillating bolometric detectors.
