Impact of Ag2O on linear, nonlinear optical and gamma-ray shielding features of ternary silver vanadio-tellurite glasses: TeO2–V2O5–Ag2O

Abstract The influence of Ag2O on the linear and nonlinear optical parameters of ternary silver vanadio-tellurite glasses, with a chemical formula of 40TeO2-(60-y)V2O5-yAg2O where y = 0–50 mol% in increments of 10 mol%, was investigated. The effect of Ag2O on the gamma-ray shielding properties of the investigated glasses was evaluated utilizing the recently released Phy-X/PSD program. The results revealed that the linear optical refractive index varied between 2.47 and 2.66 for the studied glasses. The molar polarizability (αmolar) decreased from 14.125 × 10−24 to 9.634 × 10−24 cm3, while the molar refractivity (Rmolar) varied from 35.596 to 24.279 (cm3/mol) as the Ag2O concentration increased from 0 to 40 mol%. The metallization criterion (Mcriterion) varied from 0.246 to 0.280, while the optical transmission factor (Toptical) increased from 0.656 to 0.694. The static dielectric constant (estatic) changed from 6.624 to 7.128, while optical electronegativity (χ*) increased from 0.580 to 0.731. The nonlinear optical susceptibility (χ3) varied from 6.923 × 10−12 to 9.637 × 10−12 esu, while the non-linear refractive index changed from 0.722 × 10−10 to 1.360 × 10−10 esu. The T40V60A0 glass sample (with no Ag2O) has the lowest μ/ρ and can shield 50.3% of the photons at an energy of 0.284 MeV, while T40V10A50 has the highest μ/ρ and can shield 78.5% of a beam of photons with the same energy. The MFP at 0.284 MeV has the following values: 2.145, 1.811, 1.470, 1.308, 1.130 and 0.975 cm for T40V60A0, T40V50A10, T40V40A20, T40V30A30, T40V20A40 and T40V10A50 glasses respectively. Altogether, the results demonstrated that the greater the Ag2O content in the glasses, the lower the TF, and thus the more effective the radiation shield. The investigated glasses have a great possibility of being applied in several optical applications.