Optical properties of high density barium borate glass for gamma ray shielding applications

Study of optical and gamma rays shielding properties were performed in glassy system of xBaO-5MgO-8Na(2)O-(87 - x) B2O3, previously prepared by melt-quenching technique. The optical properties of the glass samples have been obtained using UV-Vis measurements. The WinXCom computer program (version 3.1) and Auto Z(eff) program (version 1.7) were used to calculate the mass attenuation coefficients and effective atomic numbers, respectively, of c-photon energies from 1 keV up to 1 GeV. The results reflected that, an addition of BaO improves the studied properties of the glass samples; hence the reported glassy system can find applications in the areas of nuclear radiation-shielding.