The role of B2O3 in lithium-zinc-calcium-silicate glass for improving the radiation shielding competencies

Abstract

In this study, a preliminary theoretical investigation on lithium-zinc-calcium-silicate (LZCS) glass with a composition of (15-x)Li2O-10ZnO-10CaO-65SiO2-xB2O3 where x: 0, 3, 6, 9, 12, and 15 mol% was performed to understand the effect of B2O3 on physical, optical, and radiation shielding properties. For this purpose, the L15B0 to L0B15 glass series was designed for evaluating glass density (ρglass), refractive index (n), mass attenuation coefficient (µm), and half-value layer (Δ0.5) parameters. The theoretical calculations showed that the increasing amount of B2O3 increased the overall ρglass from 2.9195 to 2.9865 g/cm3. Further, the addition of B2O3 in substitution for Li2O enhanced the n parameter from 1.6882 to 1.7626. Additionally, BatchMaker software aided to investigate viscosity behavior with the increasing temperature. We found out that the melting point of LZCS glass series ascends with the addition of B2O3, namely from 1309 to 1624 ºC. On the other hand, the newly developed Phy-X/PSD software computations paved the way for ascertaining µm and Δ0.5. According to the µm computations, one can clearly state that an increasing trend is observable against the increasing photon energy, but the L0B15 possessed an enhanced shielding ability than that of the remaining at all photon energies. Moreover, we found out that the Δ0.5 increased with respect to the ascending photon energies, however, the Δ0.5 was effectively improved with the addition of B2O3 in the order of L0B155B0. Lastly, a comparison for Δ0.5 variations between L0B15 and commercially available RS253 G18 evidently demonstrated that L0B15 achieves 4.11 cm while RS253 G18 fulfills 4.95 which in turn confirms that the proposed glass system can be utilized in radiation shielding applications. All in all, B2O3 has promising effects on radiation shielding features in LZCS glass series.