An extensive investigation of physical, optical and radiation shielding properties for borate glasses modified with gadolinium oxide

We prepared four Gd2O3 doped borate glasses and investigated their physical, optical and radiation shielding features. The density of glass samples was increased linearly with the Gd2O3 content. The transmission spectra of the samples show more than 85% transmittance suggesting their superior transparency in the visible region. The band gap decreases with increase in Gd2O3 content. The Geant4 code was used to find the attenuation factor for the samples between 0.284 and 2.506 MeV. The results demonstrated that the transmission factor changes from 51% (corresponding to 20 mol% of Gd2O3) to 39% (for 35 mol%) at 0.284 MeV. The addition of Gd2O3 affects highly the mass attenuation parameter at 0.284 and 0.347 MeV. The effective atomic numbers of the glass sample corresponding to 20 mol% of Gd2O3 are in the range 12.06–18.79. The maximum tenth value layer was observed for 20 mol% of Gd2O3 sample (15.768 cm).