Investigation of the structure and radiation shielding properties of borate/Y2O3 glasses

Recently, borate glasses doped with rare earth ions have attracted increasing attention due to their higher attenuation of ionizing radiations. In this work, Zinc Sodium borate glasses 55 B2O3-10 ZnO-x Y2O3-(35-x) Na2O mol.% (where x = 0, 2 and 4 mol.%) have been prepared using melting quenching procedure. The effect of replacement of Na2O with Y2O3 on the structural and optical properties of the prepared glasses were studied using X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Fourier Transform Infrared spectroscopy. The structural analysis performed via XRD indicates that no changes in the amorphous state of the glass samples due to the addition of Y2O3. Increasing the Y2O3 content increases the density of the glass samples. Radiation shielding parameters such as the mass attenuation coefficients MAC, half-value layer (HVL), tenth value layer (TVL), mean free path (MFP), effective atomic number (Z(eff)), effective electron density (N-eff), and equivalent atomic number (Z(eq)) were estimated at different energy regions using Phy-X database software. The Z(eff), N-eff, Z(eq) and C-eff values increase with increasing the Y2O3 content. The increase in Y2O3 content decreases the values of HVL and MFP. The neutron attenuation results show that the neutrons absorption and the fast neutron removal cross-sections increases with increasing the content of Y2O3.