The impact of V2O5 on structure, dielectric, and radiation-shielding characteristics of borate-lead-fluoride glasses

The effect of vanadium oxide (V2O5) on the structural, dielectric, and shielding features of borate-lead-fluoride glasses was investigated. The density of the glass network increased steadily from 3.18 to 3.28 g.cm−3 as the vanadium content increased from 0.0 to 10 mol%. The evolution of functional groups and units such as non-bridging BO3, and bridging BO4, in our newly developed glasses was exposed by FTIR analysis. Since the fraction of bridging units BO4 increases when V2O5 is added up to 2 mol%. This indicates that the conversion of BO3 groups into BO4 groups is facilitated by V2O5. However, at higher concentrations of V2O5 (> 2 mol%), a reversal reaction occurs wherein the BO3 unit fraction increases and the BO4 unit fraction starts to decrease. All the glasses loaded with different amounts of V2O5 mol% had a sharp decline in dielectric constant with increasing frequency over the low frequency interval. As the V2O5 level grew up to 2 mol%, the dielectric constant value was marginally reduced and then increased for higher concentrations. All of the glasses under examination displayed different relaxation peaks in the range of 100 Hz to 20 kHz on their measured loss tangent (tan δ), but vanadium doping caused them to shift to higher frequencies. At 0.015 MeV, the maximum MAC values for the V-0.0 to V-10.0 samples were found to be 29.205 cm2/g to 30.082 cm2/g. In terms of radiation shielding, the V-10.0 sample exhibited the highest values of mass (MAC) and linear (LAC) attenuation coefficients, while the same sample possessed the lowest values of half value layer and mean free path among all investigated glasses. Therefore, the investigate glass can be used in several optical and radiation shielding applications.