Analysis of borosilicate glasses doped with heavy metal oxides for gamma radiation shielding application using Geant4 simulation code

Abstract

The goal of this research is to investigate the influence of three heavy metal oxides (Bi2O3, BaO and TiO2) on the gamma rays shielding effectiveness of borosilicate glasses. The Geant4 simulation code has been applied to estimate the mass attenuation coefficients (μ/ρ) of 30B2O3–(70-x)SiO2–xHMO glass systems (where HMO are Bi2O3, BaO and TiO2 with 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 mol%). We estimated the μ/ρ values at six energies (i.e. 0.347, 0.511, 0.826, 1.173, 1.275 and 2.506 MeV). To determine the accuracy of the obtained results, we compared the Geant4 data with those calculated using WinXcom software. The obtained Geant4 values of the selected borosilicate glasses with different concentrations of Bi2O3, BaO and TiO2 agreed quite well with the WinXcom results at all energies. The addition of Bi2O3 and BaO increases the μ/ρ values, while the samples doped with TiO2 showed insignificant changes in μ/ρ values with the addition of TiO2. All the presented samples have lower HVL than the undoped glass sample (70SiO2-30B2O3 sample). This means that the addition of the three dopants (Bi2O3, BaO and TiO2) have led to a decrease in the HVL which enhances the attenuation performance of the current samples.