Assessment of mechanical and gamma ray shielding capability of highly dense PbO-TeO2-CdO glasses

Abstract

The highly dense PbO-TeO2-CdO glasses have been fabricated by the melt quenching procedure. The prepared samples are light yellow in colour and are highly transparent. The density of the samples is very high and it lies in the range of 5.576–6.082 g/cm3. The molar volume is showing downtrend from 35.488 to 33.705 cm3 accounting towards the compactness of the samples with addition of PbO. Oxygen packing density increases from 30.996 to 32.637 whereas the oxygen molar volume is decreasing from 32.262 to 30.641 cm3 mol−1 with increase in PbO content. As PbO grows, E's modulus rises from 18.517 to 19.368 GPa, B's from 6.903 to 7.705 GPa, G's from 9.504 to 9.662 GPa, and L's from 19575 to 20.558 GPa. We used the Phy-X software to estimate the radiation shielding properties for the prepared glasses in a wide energy range of 0.015–15 MeV. We reported an enhancement in the mass attenuation coefficient (MAC) values when the PbO level increases from 70 to 77.5 mol %, this he highest MAC is found for PTC4, while the lowest MAC is reported for PTC1 sample. The photon energy has an impact on Linear attenuation coefficient (LAC) and the Greatest values of this parameter is reported at 0.015 MeV and equalling 501.64, 521.84, 549.53 and 569.17 cm−1 for the PTC1 to PTC4 glasses. In contrast, the lowest LAC is reported at 15 MeV (in the range of 0.283–0.313 cm−1). According to the LAC, the studied samples are able to attenuate more photons in the low energy region. The effective atomic number (Zeff) is also evaluated and similar to LAC, we found that the Zeff is increased due to the addition of PbO. From the results of different shielding factors, the inclusion of PbO alters the radiation attenuation performance.