Experimental investigation of radiation shielding competence of B2O3-Na2O-Al2O3-BaO-CaO glass system

Abstract

Abstract Aiming to extend the scope of utilizing glass in radiation shielding, this work investigates the radiation interaction response of a borate-based glass system. Four borate-glass samples of different substituting concentrations of calcium oxide ( $$70-x$$ 70 - x )B2O3: $$10$$ 10 Na2O $$:5$$ : 5 Al2O3 $$:15$$ : 15 BaO: $$x$$ x CaO were prepared. To assess the shielding performance of the prepared glass samples, a high-purity germanium detector and different radioactive sources (different energies) were used. Via the narrow beam method, the linear attenuation coefficients (LACs) were experimentally measured. So, the transmission factor (TF), the half-value layer (HVL), the tenth value layer (TVL), the mean free path (MFP), and the radiation protection efficiency (RPE) were calculated for all prepared samples. It was observed that the increase of the concentration of calcium oxide in the proposed borate-based glass samples leads to improve their performance in shielding against radiation. At low energy, the RPE of the samples is almost 100%. However, it was observed that as energy of the radiation source increases, the shielding performance of the samples will decrease. High energy dependence was found when calculating TF, HVL, TVL, and MFP. They were increased with the increase of the energy of the incident photons. At 0.662 MeV, the TF values are equal to 79.26, 79.00, 79.72, and 78.43% for BNABC-1, BNABC-2, BNABC-3, and BNABC-4 in the same oder, respectively. The application of the proposed composition of borate-based glass as a transparent shield against low-energy ionizing radiation was highlighted.

Keywords

• Attenuation parameters
• Borate-based glasses
• Radiation shielding
• Glass shields
• Ionizing radiation