The influence of PbO on the radiation attenuation features of tellurite glass

Abstract Tellurite based glasses have been of considerable interest in the last decades due to their interesting mechanical, physical and chemical features. Presently, different investigators and engineers are being devoted for developing the Tellurite based glasses to be used as effective radiation shielding materials. Our aim is to study the energy as well as PbO content dependence on the gamma rays attenuation behavior of lead tellurite glasses when the PbO content changes from 0 to 30 mol% between 0.356 and 2.506 MeV photon energies. This was achieved by considering the lead tellurite glass system with the composition x(PbO)-(100-x)(TeO2). The photon attenuation factors of the lead tellurite glasses were evaluated at five energies utilizing Monte Carlo simulation (Geant4 code). The reative difference values between Geant4 and XCOM data for the six glasses are less than 7% and this validates the accuracy of the obtained results. The mass attenuation coefficient (μ/ρ) reduces with an increase in the energy whereas it increases when TeO2 is replaced by PbO. The influence of PbO on the μ/ρ is significant only at 0.356 and 0.511 MeV, but at the other energies it is found that PbO slightly affects the attenuation factor. The linear attenuation coefficient of 30PbO–70TeO2 (coded as TePb6) is higher than the other samples. The effective atomic number has the maximum value at 0.356 MeV (in the range of 27.76–41.25). We compared the mean free path for the tellurite glasses with RS-520 and RS-360, Osmani, nasir and PHP glasses. The results reveal that the lead tellurite glasses (especially the samples with high PbO content) are a candidate as protection materials from hazardous radiation and have better attenuation in comparison to some nuclear engineering materials.