Theoretical and experimental study of PbO-SiO2-Sb2O3 glasses as gamma ray shielding materials

Abstract

Investigation and application of high energy radiations require the availability of radiation shields. In this research, glasses with the composition of 0.65PbO.(0.35-x)SiO2.xSb2O3 (x = 0, 0.01, 0.02, 0.03, 0.04, 0.05) were fabricated and characterized using densitometry, XRD, UV-Vis spectrophotometry and gamma ray spectrometry. The theoretical attenuation coefficient of the samples was calculated using WinXCom software. It was observed that although PbO strongly increased the mass attenuation coefficient for Co-60 radiation of glass, its substitution by Sb2O3 initially increased the parameter from 0.0609 to 0.0621, due to the dominant effect of Sb2O3 on bubble removal. The results also showed that there was an inconsistency between the theoretical and empirical results, that is, with increasing Sb2O3 content of the samples, the attenuation coefficient initially increased and then decreased, while the theoretical calculations predicted a continuous decline. It appears that the disagreement is mainly due to the fining effect of Sb2O3 and its effects on the bubble content. The WinXCom software is designed to work solely based on the mixture law. The sample 0.65PbO.0.34SiO2.0.01Sb2O3 showed the highest mass attenuation. The coefficient was 0.0621 and 0.0609 in 1.250 MeV for the samples with x = 0 and 0.01.