Nuclear shielding performances of borate/sodium/potassium glasses doped with Sm3 thorn ions

In this paper the impact of adding the trivalent samarium (Sm3+) rare earth (RE3+) ions on the nuclear shielding performances of borate/sodium/potassium glasses with chemical form B2O3(70-x)/Na2O15/K2O15/Sm2O3; x = 0.0-2.0 mol% was examined. Material densities were enhanced quantitatively from 2.22 to 2.48 g/cm3. Several radiation shielding parameters have been determined in the 0.15-15 MeV photon energy range via MCNPX simulation code and Phy-X/PSD software. Results showed that the addition of Sm3+ ions to the glasses improved the linear (LAC) and mass (MAC) attenuation coefficients. The Sm2.0 sample (rich with Sm3+ ions and with a high density) has the highest LAC and MAC at all photon energy values under investigation. The half-value layer (T1/2) values of the studied Sm-glasses followed the trend: (T1/2)Sm0.0> (T1/2)Sm0.1> (T1/2)Sm0.3> (T1/2)Sm0.5> (T1/ 2)Sm0.7> (T1/2)Sm1.0> (T1/2)Sm1.5> (T1/2)Sm2.0. The mean free path (l) has a similar trend as T1/ 2. The numerical results of effective atomic number (Zeff) were: Sm0.0 = 10.538, Sm0.1 = 10.70646, Sm0.3 = 11.03259, Sm0.5 = 11.28569, Sm0.7 = 11.53882, Sm1.0 = 11.91848, Sm1.5 = 12.42718, Sm2.0 = 12.9175 at 0.015 MeV, and Sm0.0 = 8.36553, Sm0.1 = 8.42831, Sm0.3 = 8.55388, Sm0.5 = 8.67944, Sm0.7 = 8.80502, Sm1.0 = 8.99335, Sm1.5 = 9.28877, Sm2.0 = 9.58377 at 15 MeV. The Sm2.0 glass sample has the greatest Zeff value across all gamma-ray energies. This condition is likewise associated with the highest Sm (Z = 62) content in Sm2.0 when compared to the other studied glasses. In addition, the Sm2.0 sample had the lowest exposure (EBF) and energy absorption (EABF) build-up factors values among the glass samples under investigation. All the obtained observations confirm that the Sm-glass samples can be considered promising materials for attenuation of nuclear radiations.(c) 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V.This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Automated summary

This study investigates the effect of adding trivalent samarium rare earth ions on the nuclear shielding performances of borate/sodium/potassium glasses. The results show that the addition of samarium ions improves the linear and mass attenuation coefficients of the glasses, as well as increases the material density. The sample with a high content of samarium ions and density exhibits the best shielding performance across all photon energy values. Therefore, the samarium-glass samples are considered promising materials for nuclear radiation attenuation.