Gamma radiation shielding investigations for selected germanate glasses

Abstract

Radiation shielding characteristics of different germanate glasses with compositions of Nd doped Bi2O3–SiO2/GeO2–Nd2O3, Sm3+ doped B2O3–GeO2–Gd2O3, Tb3 doped GeO2–B2O3–SiO2–Ga2O3, TeO2–GeO2–Li2O and Na2O–GeO2–P2O5 glasses have been studied using XCOM program at several photon energies between 0.015 and 10 MeV. Dependencies of their photon attenuation properties with the photon energy and the composition have been investigated. The mass attenuation coefficient values and the effective atomic numbers for Nd doped Bi2O3–SiO2/GeO2–Nd2O3glasses are higher than those of the other samples. 69Bi2O3–30GeO2–1.0Nd2O3 has the highest mass attenuation coefficients among the selected samples. The Zeff results revealed that to increase the photon attenuation ability for the germanate glasses, high Z-elements (such as Bi, Te and Tb) in a suitable concentration must be included. The HVL results for the present germanate glasses suggested that the attenuation capacity of the gamma photons increases as the density of the sample increases, hence, the glass sample with high density must be considered for high attenuation ability. Also, the significant influence of modifier contents on the HVL values namely the attenuation ability has been noticed for Tb3 doped GeO2–B2O3–SiO2–Ga2O3 and TeO2–Li2O–GeO2 glasses. Moreover, the values of the mean free path for the selected samples have been compared with those of different radiation shielding glasses and concrete samples.