Structural and attenuation properties of rare-earth and barium oxide modified borate glasses for gamma ray protection

Abstract This research intends to investigate the B 2 O 3 –TiO 2 –BaO–ZnO–La 2 O 3 –Nd 2 O 3 glass system’s radiation shielding characteristics at the Cs-137-, Co-60-, and Na-22-emitted energies. The mass attenuation coefficient was investigated in the 0.284–2.506 MeV range, with the maximum value for all glasses of 0.130–0.143 cm 2 /g found at 0.284 MeV, and the minimum value of around 0.039 cm 2 /g at 2.506 MeV. The MAC results indicated the glasses to be effective attenuators in terms of low-energy radiation exposure, whereas their attenuation effectiveness decreases at higher energy levels. The linear attenuation coefficient (LAC) results demonstrated a direct relation between the amounts of BaO, La 2 O 3 , and Nd 2 O 3 in the glasses and their radiation shielding performance, whereby the LAC increase rate with these components’ addition depends upon the energy. The effective atomic number exhibits a linear increase with the glasses’ density increase, whereby at 0.284 MeV the values are 12.71 and 15.51 for LaNd0.5 and LaNd2, respectively. The tenth value layer results showed that the thickness of the glasses needs to be approximately 4 cm and 6–7 cm to attenuate 90 % of the radiation at 0.284 and 0.511 MeV respectively.