Fabrication of novel BaO–Al2O3–Bi2O3–B2O3 glass system: Comprehensive study on elastic, mechanical and shielding properties

Abstract

The influence of barium oxide to the elastic and shielding properties of alumina bismuth borate glass system with the compositions (BaO)x(Al2O3)0.05 (Bi2O3)0.3 (B2O3)0.65-x where x = 0, 0.05, 0.10, 0.15, 0.20, 0.25, 0.30 mol% and classified as G1, G2, G3, G4, G5, G6 and G7 were investigated. The elastic properties of the glass system were examined by bulk density, molar volume, X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy and non-destructive ultrasonic velocity measurement. The experimental results show that the density of the glass sample increase and molar volume of the glass sample was decrease. The XRD analysis revealed that the glass sample shows the characteristics of the amorphous nature without any sharp lines or peaks while the FTIR revealed the major broad absorption bands for borate glass structure. The ultrasonic velocities and elastic moduli measurement shows an increasing trend with the addition of BaO. The mass attenuation coefficient (MAC) demonstrated that the presence of BaO enhances the MAC values, resulting in an improvement in the shielding competency of the fabricated glasses. The highest interactions between photons and the atoms of the glasses occur around 0.122 MeV, and the glass samples have an excellent blocking capacity to photons, according to the effective atomic number (Zeff) data. Furthermore, the half value layer (HVL) revealed that when the BaO level in the composition increases, the HVL values will reduces. As a conclusion, the radiation shielding factors revealed that G7 glass with 30 mol% of BaO is the optimum performance of the produced samples.