Novel borosilicate glass system: Na2B4O7-SiO2-MnO2: Synthesis, average electronics polarizability, optical basicity, and gamma-ray shielding features

Abstract

A novel glass system with a chemical composition described by the formula 50SiO2– (48+x) Na2B4O7 – x MnO2 (0≤x≤2 mol %) was fabricated using a melt-quenching method. An XRD diffractometer procedure was applied to check the state of these glass samples. Obtaining the physical and optical values of the manganese borosilicate glass system can help develop solid-state devices and optical memory equipment. The energy gap shifting to higher energies may be due to the formation of bridging oxygens (BO). Urbach energies decrease in the range between 0.736 and 0.485 eV, with increasing the borax concentration between 48-50 mol %, respectively. The polarizability and optical basicity were investigated based on the experimental values of the refractive index for the fabricated glass samples. The polarizability and basicity were found to have the same trend as the refractive index. Monte Carlo N-particle transport code (MCNP-5) was applied to evaluate the gamma-shielding features for the investigated glass samples at gamma-photon energies between 0.248 and 1.406 MeV. The linear attenuation coefficient (LAC) was simulated based on the average track length of the gamma photons inside the fabricated glass samples. The highest LAC was achieved for the G5 glass sample, which has no MnO2 and changed between 0.330-0.153 cm−1 for photons with energy ranged between 0.248 and 1.406 MeV, respectively.