The Vital Role of La2O3 on the La2O3-CaO-B2O3-SiO2 Glass System for Shielding Some Common Gamma Ray Radioactive Sources.

Hanan Al-Ghamdi,Fahad I. Almasoud,Mengge Dong,Chao Wang,Aljawhara H. Almuqrin,M. I. Sayyed

doi:10.3390/ma14174776

Abstract

The role La2O3 on the radiation shielding properties of La2O3-CaO-B2O3-SiO2 glass systems was investigated. The energies were selected between 0.284 and 1.275 MeV and Phy-X software was used for the calculations. BLa10 glass had the least linear attenuation coefficient (LAC) at all the tested energies, while BLa30 had the greatest, which indicated that increasing the content of La2O3 in the BLa-X glasses enhances the shielding performance of these glasses. The mass attenuation coefficient (MAC) of BLa15 decreases from 0.150 cm2/g to 0.054 cm2/g at energies of 0.284 MeV and 1.275 MeV, respectively, while the MAC of BLa25 decreases from 0.164 cm2/g to 0.053 cm2/g for the same energies, respectively. At all energies, the effective atomic number (Zeff) values follow the trend BLa10 < BLa15 < BLa20 < BLa25 < BLa30. The half value thickness (HVL) of the BLa-X glass shields were also investigated. The minimum HVL values are found at 0.284 MeV. The HVL results demonstrated that BLa30 is the most space-efficient shield. The tenth value layer (TVL) results demonstrated that the glasses are more effective attenuators at lower energies, while decreasing in ability at greater energies. These mean free path results proved that increasing the density of the glasses, by increasing the amount of La2O3 content, lowers MFP, and increases attenuation, which means that BLa30, the glass with the greatest density, absorbs the most amount of radiation.

Highlights

Radiation protective materials are used widely in diagnostic radiology, nuclear facilities and hospitals to decrease the exposure of the ionizing radiations to medical physicist, patients and workers on the nuclear facilities
Many recent research has shown that the radiation shielding attitudes for glassy medium can be enhanced by changing the chemical composition and adding a certain amount of heavy metal oxides (HMO) and this is a very easy task during the preparation of the glasses [7,8,9]
The recent works proved that the glasses with HMO are preferable in practical applications than using thick concrete for many reasons such as the concrete is an opaque and this limited the utilizations of the concrete in some applications [10,11]

Summary

Introduction

Radiation protective materials (sometime called shielding materials) are used widely in diagnostic radiology, nuclear facilities and hospitals to decrease the exposure of the ionizing radiations to medical physicist, patients and workers on the nuclear facilities. The main goal of the radiation shielding is to protect the persons who are using the X-ray equipment from the harmful effects of the photons that are emitted from these equipment It is worth determining the type, thickness and composition of the shielding materials that can be used practically in real applications [1,2]. Lanthanum oxide is an inorganic compound which has a very high dielectric constant and was utilized in fabricating certain types of optical glasses like telescope lenses and cameras. It is used in some ferroelectric materials. We aim in this work to examine the influence of the addition of La2 O3 in borosilicate glasses on radiation shielding properties

Materials and Methods

Results

Conclusions