Design and development of transparent glasses for radiation shielding applications

Abstract

In this work, we present the fabrication of free lead glasses for radiation shielding applications by applying the melt-quenching method. The impact of Bi2O3 on the physical, mechanical and radiation shielding properties was investigated. The density of the glasses enhances from 3.833 to 4.283 g/cm3 due to the change of the Bi2O3 content. The Makishima and Mackenzie (MM) were used to calculate the Young's modulus (Y), bulk modulus (B), and longitudinal modulus (L). These parameters have been studies as a function of the mol% of Bi2O3 present in the samples. We evaluated the photon shielding competence of the prepared glasses and the calculations were carried out using Phy-X/PSD software between 0.015 and 15 MeV photon energies. From our results, it is demonstrated that the value of the effective atomic number (Zeff) in the low energy range was obviously enhanced with the growth of Bi2O3 contents. The linear attenuation coefficient (LAC) and Zeff results have similar trends, which enhance by adding Bi2O3 contents, and reduce with increasing the energy. The results indicated that the borate glasses with high concentration of Bi2O3 had higher radiation shielding properties than some commercial glasses. So, these prepared glasses may utilize in some applications such as radiation shielding.