Neutron-gamma shielding properties of chalcogenide glasses

Glasses are important materials due to its utilization in many different fields. As the radiation started to be used in many field its protection becomes vital for human health. Thus in this study, the gamma and neutron shielding characters of glasses formulated as 90 %(Se)- (10-x)% (Te)-x%(Ag) where x = 5,6,7 (mol%) glass were investigated. This is done to evaluate the ability of glasses to act as shielding materials. The mass attenuation coefficient (MAC) was computed by the Phy-X/PSD program for energies ranging from 0.015 to 15 MeV and from the computed MAC values the other significant shielding parameters such as effective atomic number (Zeff) and effective electron density (Neff) were obtained for all glass samples. The fast neutron removal cross -sections of all glass samples were also obtained.