Boro-silicate glasses co-doped Er+3/Yb+3 for optical amplifier and gamma radiation shielding applications

Abstract

Optical materials based glasses started to gain much attention due to its thermal and mechanical stability besides its friendly environment, especially in radiation shielding applications. In this work, we synthesized a series of five glasses using melt-quenching-annealing method. The glasses were synthesized was boro-silicate glasses with the composition of (40−x−y) B2O3 - 10 SiO2 - 10 Al2O3 - 30 ZnO - 10 Li2O - x Er2O3 - y Yb2O3, were (x = 1.0 mol %) and (y = 0.5, 1.0, 1.5, 2.0, and 2.5). Specific physical properties for those glasses have been measured and calculated based on related formulas. X−ray diffraction has been utilized to study the glassy nature of these materials, Raman spectrometer study was used to explore the structure of the fabricated glasses. Optical properties were thoroughly studied such as optical absorption, and optical band gap. The basic gamma photon shielding parameters for the prepared glasses were reported between 0.015 and 15 MeV. The mass attenuation coefficient for the prepared samples increases as Yb2O3 concentration increases from 0.5 to 2.5 mol%. The highest and lowest values of the effective atomic number were found for 2.5 Yb+3 and 0.5 Yb+3 which contain the maximum and minimum concentrations of Yb2O3. The radiation shielding results suggested that 2.5 Yb+3 is the superior photons attenuator among the B2O3–SiO2–10Al2O3–ZnO–Li2O–Er2O3−Yb2O3 glasses.