Impact of CdO on optical, structural, elastic, and radiation shielding parameters of CdO–PbO–ZnO–B2O3–SiO2 glasses

Abstract

CdO–PbO-B2O3-SiO2–ZnO glasses were prepared by melt quenching methods with different compositions. Experimental and theoretical techniques examined their structural, optical, elastic and radiation shielding ability. It was found that the internal structural units such as BO4, BO3and nonbridging oxygens changed slightly with further additions of CdO. Moreover, the optical, elastic and radiation shielding properties of these glasses were changed with further CdO additions. In more detail, the density, packing density, Urbach energy, elastic parameters and radiation shielding ability decreased with additional CdO concentrations. In contrast, the optical band gap and dissociation energy increased with additional CdO concentrations. These behaviors of structural, optical, mechanical and radiation shielding ability were attributed to the structural changes produced due to replacing PbO by CdO. Despite the decreased behavior of radiation shielding ability with CdO additions, the half-value layer of all glass samples is compared to standard and well-known shielding materials. From this comparison, we found that, all glass samples are better than the standard and well-known shielding materials. Furthermore, we concluded that, our glass samples could be used in the nuclear radiation fields as effective shields.