Bi2O3-B2O3-ZnO-BaO-Li2O glass system for gamma ray shielding applications

Abstract

In order to investigate new candidate glasses for gamma shielding application, we synthesized a number of glasses with composition of (50+x)Bi2O3-(30-x)B2O3-10ZnO-5BaO-5Li2O where x = 10, 15 and 20, all in mol%. We used the conventional melt-quenching-annealing technique with melting temperature at 975 °C and 300 °C for 30 min and 5 h, respectively. Density and other important physical properties have been measured and calculated using related methods and formulas. Moreover, X-ray diffraction have been utilized for all samples to explore the structure of these glasses, the XRD profile have been recorded between 10° to 80° for all samples, while the functional groups of the elements evolved in these glasses have been studied using FTIR with the range of 4000–400 cm−1. Additionally, optical absorption for the synthesized glasses have been measured in the range of 200–800 nm to investigate the cut-off wavelength and optical band gap. Besides, the mass attenuation coefficient values of the present glasses have been estimated through WinXCom software as well as MCNPX computer code and the obtained results were used to determine the effective atomic number (Zeff), the half value layer (HVL) and the mean free path (MFP). From the derived results, it was found that S3 is the superior glass sample in terms of shielding performance on account of larger Zeff values and lower MFP/HVL values among the investigated glasses. The present glasses indicate potentiality to be evaluated as shielding absorbers and for an improved shielding effectiveness of the Bi2O3-B2O3-ZnO-BaO-Li2O glasses, a large Bi2O3 concentration would be required.