Physical, structural, optical and gamma‐ray shielding properties of Na ₂ O‐CdO‐Bi ₂ O ₃ ‐B ₂ O ₃ glasses

Abstract The current study shows a new attempt to develop gamma‐ray shielding glasses. The proposed glass is a borate‐base composition modified with sodium and cadmium oxides and different concentrations of bismuth oxide. Based on the melt‐quenching technique, we prepared four glass compositions of 20NaO‐15CdO‐ (65− x )B ₂ O ₃ ‐ x Bi ₂ O ₃ , where x = 0, 10, 20, and 30 mol%. The amorphous nature of the prepared samples was confirmed by XRD. To get more details about the structure, FTIR and UV‐Vis‐NIR were performed to characterize the prepared glasses. Moreover, we used ab initio molecular dynamics simulations to create the possible structures of the new compositions, and compared with the experimental measurements. A series of shielding parameters was investigated based on the gamma‐ray emission in the range of 0.01‐10 MeV. The results revealed an improvement of the shielding parameters with increasing of Bi ₂ O ₃ content. The sample with the highest Bi ₂ O ₃ (S4) has the highest Z _eff and least HVL, while S1 (with no Bi ₂ O ₃ content) has the lowest Z _eff at all energy levels. The gamma‐ray transmission factor of the prepared glasses was compared with some commercial concretes. Finally, the new glasses especially with highest Bi ₂ O ₃ are recommended to use in gamma radiation shielding facilities.