Structural and radiation shielding properties of BaTiO3 ceramic with different concentrations of Bismuth and Ytterbium

This study aims to explore the effect of Bi2O3 and Yb2O3 on the structural and radiation shielding properties of BaTiO3 ceramic samples fabricated by solid-state reaction and high-energy ball milling techniques. X-ray diffraction (XRD) spectra revealed that the current ceramic samples have a tetragonal phase. Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) results showed a peak at 1435 cm(-1) for all ceramics that attributed to Ba-Ti-O. Various physical properties like density, packing density, molar volume, and Poisson's ratio were calculated for the prepared ceramic samples. The highest concentration of Bi2O3 (C3) exhibited the highest density values (5.562 g/cm(3)), packing density (0.630), and Poisson's ratio (0.279), whereas the high concentration of Yb2O3 (C6) had a density of 4.731 g/cm(3), a packing density of 0.529, and a Poisson's ratio of 0.237. In addition, different radiation shielding properties were determined by using the Phy-X program for all ceramic samples. The mass attenuation coefficient (mu/rho) values for C3 and C6 at 1 MeV were 0.065 and 0.062 cm(2)/g, respectively. Based on the calculated (mu/rho), the C3 sample revealed a promising half-value layer (HVL), mean free path (MFP), and effective atomic number (Z(eff)). Regarding the neutron shielding properties, the effective removal cross-section (Sigma(R)) values for C1, C2, C3, C4, C5 and C6 were 0.101, 0.098, 0.095, 0.089, 0.88 and 0.085 cm(-1), respectively. In this regard, C1 showed the highest Sigma(R) compared with the other prepared samples. In conclusion, C1 and C3 samples have superior neutron and photon shielding features compared with the other prepared ceramics. In light of these obtained results, the fabricated ceramics can be concluded to be very helpful for photon and neutron shielding applications.