Study on Radiation Shielding Properties of New Barium-Doped Zinc Tellurite Glass.

Shiyu Yin,Aifeng Li,Yintong He,Zhongjian Ma,Hao Wang

doi:10.3390/ma15062117

Abstract

This study aimed to investigate the effect of BaF2 on the radiation-shielding ability of lead telluride glass. A physical radioactive source was used to estimate the mass attenuation coefficient (μm) of the 60TeO2-20PbO-(20-x)ZnO-xBaF2 glass system (where x = 1,2,3,5,6,7,9 mol%). We tested the μm values at seven energies (0.059, 0.081, 0.122, 0.356, 0.662, 1.173, 1.332 MeV). To determine the accuracy of the obtained results, we compared the experimental data with the data calculated using the XCOM software. The experimental values obtained for the selected lead telluride glasses at different concentrations of BaF2 are in good agreement with the results of XCOM at all energies. The addition of BaF2 increased the μm value of the sample. At the same time, the half-value layer (HVL), mean free path (MFP), effective atomic number (Zeff), and fast neutron removal cross-section (RCS) of the glass were studied. With the increase in the BaF2 content, the HVL value and MFP value of the glass decreased, and the Zeff value and RCS increased, indicating that the addition of BaF2 enhanced the radiation-shielding performance of the glass.

Highlights

Materials 2022, 15, 2117. https://In recent years, with the continuous development of research or industrial equipment such as industrial X-ray systems, reflex therapy, nuclear power generation, and particle accelerators, reducing ionizing radiation and preventing it from causing damage to workers or the environment has become an important research topic
Suitable radiation-shielding materials should meet the conditions of environmental protection, durability, transparency, and easy production at the same time
Many research groups are currently focusing on different glass systems among the above materials [6–8]

Summary

Introduction

Materials 2022, 15, 2117. https://In recent years, with the continuous development of research or industrial equipment such as industrial X-ray systems, reflex therapy, nuclear power generation, and particle accelerators, reducing ionizing radiation and preventing it from causing damage to workers or the environment has become an important research topic. Researchers are constantly trying to find new high-quality radiation-shielding materials, with the lowest possible cost to attenuate radiation to a safe and acceptable level [1–5]. Suitable radiation-shielding materials should meet the conditions of environmental protection, durability, transparency, and easy production at the same time. Researchers have tried to study alloys, lead-free concrete, rocks, polymers, and glass in developing radiation shielding materials. Many research groups are currently focusing on different glass systems among the above materials [6–8]. This is because glass is simple to prepare and has excellent comprehensive properties such as high transmittance, damage resistance, pressure resistance, and heat resistance. Many research groups have reported on glass of various substrates and their nuclear protective properties in the literature [9–11]

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion