Physical, structural, mechanical, and various radiation shielding properties of TeO2-GeO2-ZnO-Al2O3-Li2O-M (M= WO3, MoO3, PbO, and CuO) glasses

Abstract

In this work, four glasses of germanate tellurite zinc aluminum with 5 mol. of different heavy metal oxide were syntheses. Using melt-quenching-annealing technique 50TeO2-20GeO2-10ZnO–5Al2O3–10Li2O-5M (mol%) were M = PbO, MoO3, WO3, and CuO. For the fabricated glasses mechanical properties such us: poisson ratio and microhardness were calculated theoretically. The structural behaviour of these glasses was studied using X-ray diffraction (XRD), Raman spectroscopy were employed to invistagte the vibrational modes such us symmetric stretching vibration mode of the [TeO4] and symmetric stretching vibration of the [GeO4] tetrahedra. Attenuated total reflectance-Fourier transform infrared (ATR-FTIR) were used to invistgate and confirm the Raman spectroscopy results. The radiation attenuation factors for the prepared glasses were reported in the energy range of 0.015–15 MeV. The results demonstrated that the glass with PbO has the highest mass attenuation coefficient (MAC), The MAC for the glass with PbO is varied between 253.012 cm2/g (at 0.015 MeV) and 0.185 cm2/g (at 15 MeV), while it is varied between 221.85 and 0.171 cm2/g. We reported the effective atomic number (Zeff) for the prepared glasses and we discussed the role of PbO, MoO3, WO3 and CuO on the Zeff values for these glasses. The half value layer (HVL) was reported and we found that the glass with PbO has the smallest HVL. The HVL results revealed that the glass with PbO can attenuate attenuate more photons than the glasses with MoO3, WO3 and CuO. The thickness of the glass must be less than 1 cm to shield 50% of the photons with energy less than 0.3 MeV. For energy of 0.5 MeV, we need a layer of about 1.5 cm to shield 50% of the incoming radiation.