Designing High-Density of PbO-Enriched Telluro-Borate Glasses for Improved Radiation Shielding: A Comprehensive Study of Attenuation Parameters

Abstract

Several radiation shielding parameters for (75-x) B 2 O 3 −10TeO 2 −13SrCO 3 −2ZnO-xPbO glasses were evaluated between 0.284 and 1.333 MeV. The PbO content in the glass has a positive relationship with the density of the glasses, leading to BTSZP0, the glass with no PbO, having the smallest density, while BTSZP5, which has 40 PbO mol%, has the greatest density. Radiation shielding parameters such as mass attenuation coefficients (MAC) and other related factors were computed, and relationships between PbO content, energy, and density are graphed. Linear attenuation coefficient (LAC) is reported and we evaluated the impact of density on the LAC values. By adding more PbO atoms, the density of the samples increased, leading to a higher LAC. The BTSZP0 sample has the highest HVL at all tested energies, with the BTSZP5 sample having the lowest HVL. Mean free path (MFP) has an inverse relationship with the density of each sample but increases with greater incoming photon energy. The effective atomic number (Z eff )values peak at low photon energies and rise significantly with increasing PbO content. The MFP and TVL of the BTSZP glasses are compared against previously tested glass samples at a set energy, and the values demosntrated the effectiveness of the BTSZP glasses.