Physical, optical and gamma radiation shielding competence of newly boro-tellurite based glasses: TeO2-B2O3-ZnO-Li2O3-Bi2O3

Herein, a traditional melt quenching method was utilized to synthesize glasses with a nominal chemical composition (80-x)TeO2-xB(2)O(3)-5ZnO-5Li(2)O(3)-10Bi(2)O(3): 30 <= x <= 80 mol%). The produced sample was coded as TBBZL30 to TBBZL80. X-ray diffraction (XRD) has been employed to test the amorphous nature of the synthesized samples. In the range of 200-500 nm wavelength, UV-Vis spectra for the glasses have been performed. Optical energy gaps (E-gap) have been determined based on the absorption measurements. With the help of (Egap), refractive index (n), molar polarizability (alpha(M)), metallization criterion (M-Cri.), molar refractivity (R-M), static dielectric constant (epsilon(Sta).), optical dielectric constant (epsilon(Opt).), reflection loss (R-L) and optical transmission (T-Opt.) have been calculated. For the fabricated boro-tellurite glasses, Phy-X/PSD was used to report some shielding factors for several energies between 15 keV and 15 MeV. The maximum attenuation for all samples took place at 15 keV and the mass attenuation coefficient varied between 52.309 and 57.084 cm(2)/g. The linear attenuation coefficient (LAC) results demonstrated that TBBZL80 has the highest attenuation than the rest of samples which is due to high content of TeO2 (containing 80 mol% of TeO2) whereas TBBZL30 has the lowest attenuation. The LAC for the fabricated samples varied between 230.160 and 351.064 cm(-1) at 15 keV. The minimum effective atomic number (EAN) occurred between 0.8 and 4 MeV and varied between 15.16 and 17.35 for TBBZL30 and 25.10-28.33 for TBBZL80. The addition of TeO2 was found to enhance the EAN and improved shielding properties for the tested TBBZL glass systems.

Automated summary

In this study, a traditional melt quenching method was used to synthesize a series of boron tellurite glass samples, with optical properties such as refractive index, molar polarizability, and static dielectric constant calculated based on absorption measurements of the samples. The addition of TeO2 was found to enhance the shielding properties of the glass systems, with the sample containing 80 mol% TeO2 showing the highest attenuation among the samples.