Optical, Structural, Radiation shielding, and Mechanical properties for borosilicate glass and glass ceramics doped with Gd2O3

Abstract

In this work, we fabricated a new series of borosilicate glass doped with different concentrations of Gd2O3. Then the glass samples were converted to glass ceramics using heat treatment at 500 °C for 2 h, and then the temperature was raised to 700 °C for 3 h. The X-ray diffraction (XRD) affirmed the amorphous nature of glass samples and the crystalline phase of glass-ceramic samples, which is related to SiO2 (cristobalite). The Fourier transform infrared displayed many peaks related to functional groups for B2O3 and SiO2, with a slight difference between glass and glass ceramic samples. The band gap (Eg) for glass samples is 3.69, 3.64, 3.65, and 3.67 eV for BSTSGd0.5, BSTSGd1, BSTSGd1.5, and BSTSGd2, respectively. At the same time, the Eg for glass ceramics is 3.61, 3.64, 3.64, and 3.64 eV for GCBSTSGd0.5, GCBSTSGd1, GCBSTSGd1.5, and GCBSTSGd2, respectively. The mechanical properties of glass samples align with packing density (Vt) and compactness results, which indicated the superiority of BSTSGd1 glass samples over other glass systems. For example, the Vt values are 0.674, 0.688, 0.683, and 0.680 for BSTSGd0.5, BSTSGD1, BSTSGd1.5, and BSTSGD2, respectively. On the other hand, we compared the linear attenuation coefficient (μ) between glass and glass ceramics which showed high compatibility due to the low difference in density for glass and glass ceramics. The μ values for BSTSGd0.5, BSTSGD1, BSTSGd1.5, and BSTSGD2 glasses at 0.600 are 0.088, 0.092, 0.093, and 0.095 cm−1, which showed enhancement when adding Gd2O3 to the glass system. It can be concluded that adding Gd2O3 slightly reduced the particle range for proton and alpha particles and enhanced the neutron and gamma shielding properties, which indicates the possibility of using the current samples in the radiation shielding field.