Mass attenuation coefficients of B2O3–Al2O3–SiO2–CaF2 glass system at 0.662 and 1.25 MeV gamma energies

Abstract

The total mass attenuation coefficients, partial interaction and the effective atomic numbers (Zeff) of glass system (80−x)B2O3–10Al2O3–10SiO2–xCaF2 (where x = 5, 10, 20, 25, 30, 35 and 40 mol %) have been calculated at photon energies 0.662 and 1.25 MeV using the WinXCom software on the basis of mixture rule. Results indicated that the total mass attenuation coefficients showed a decrease with increasing the CaF2 concentration, due to a decrease in Compton scattering probability, which gave a dominant contribution to the total mass attenuation coefficients for the studied glass samples at both energies. However, the photoelectric absorption and coherent scattering showed an increase with increasing the CaF2, concentrations at same energies. For a comparison, the total mass attenuation coefficients of the glass system had lower values at the energy 1.25 MeV than that at 0.662 MeV. Zeff was found to increase linearly with the increase of CaF2 concentrations. It was concluded that low CaF2 concentrations in glass system, under study, have Zeff close to that of human tissue and have higher total absorption coefficients at energy of 0.662 MeV than that at 1.25 MeV. These results are very useful in designing gamma radiation detectors using thermoluminescence technique. Therefore, it is recommended to use low CaF2 concentration of our glass system as good gamma detectors at energy of 1.25 MeV.