Investigation of bismuth borate glass system modified with barium for structural and gamma-ray shielding properties

Study of environment friendly bismuth incorporated lithium borate glass system for structural, gamma-ray and fast neutron shielding properties

The present work is aimed at incorporating the heavy metal oxide 'bismuth oxide' in lithium-borate glass system and studying its effect on the glass structure, durability, gamma-ray and neutron shielding ability. The density, XRD, Raman, FTIR, and UV-Visible spectroscopic techniques assisted in understanding the structure of ternary bismuth‑lithium-borate glass system. It has been found that the glass samples are of amorphous nature and structure is mainly built up of BO₄, BO₃, BiO_6, BiO₃ units and non-bridging oxygens (NBOs). Bismuth-incorporated glasses possess improved water resistance ability. The gamma-ray shielding ability was evaluated from mass attenuation coefficient, mean free path, tenth value layer and effective atomic number and it was found to be improved with the addition of bismuth oxide content. The exposure build up factor was also computed to account for the secondary photons and multiple Compton scattering. The removal cross section for fast neutrons (∑_R) was also evaluated to study the neutron shielding ability of our prepared glasses. The glasses were also compared with barite concrete and commercial shielding glass RS 360 for gamma-rays and, with H₂O, graphite, ordinary and hematite-serpentine concrete for checking neutrons shielding ability. It was observed that our glasses have better radiation shielding properties than the compared materials. In the light of these obtained results, it was concluded that the prepared bismuth‑lithium-borate glass system can be utilised for radiation shielding applications.

Gamma-ray shielding parameters of Li2B4O7 glasses: undoped and doped with magnetite, siderite and Zinc-Borate minerals cases

Designing new shielding materials and calculating their shielding parameters are important task to keep living in safe from hazardous effects of radiation. In this study, the lithium borate glasses with chemical formula (Li2B4O7)(100−x)Yx (x = 0, 10, 20, 30 and 40 wt % and Y = magnetite, siderite and zinc-borate) were fabricated via melt quenching technique. X-ray diffraction method was employed to confirm amorphous structure of fabricated glass samples. The glass sample’s shielding parameters such as mass attenuation coefficient, effective atomic number, and half value layer were measured experimentally by the narrow beam transmission method for 81, 276, 302, 356, and 383 keV of incident photon energies. Also, WinXCom software was used to calculate theoretical shielding parameters from 1 keV to 105 MeV photon energy. Moreover, Geometric Progression (G–P) method was used to calculate exposure buildup factor (EBF) values for incident photon energy 0.015 MeV–15 MeV up to penetration depths of 40 mfp (mean free path). Among the obtained results, while Li2B4O7 glass with magnetite 40 % has the highest mass attenuation and effective atomic number, it has the lowest half value layer and exposure buildup factor. The results show that the fabricated glass systems could be considered as a good candidate for radiation safety.