Physical, optical properties and radiation shielding studies of xLa2O3-(100-x)B2O3 glass system

Abstract Herein we prepared five glass samples from the composition xLa2O3-(100-x)B2O3 (where x = 15, 20, 25, 30 and 35 mol%) and reported the physical, optical and gamma radiation shielding characteristics. The density of glass samples was increased from 3.1531 to 3.9443 g/cm3 with the addition of La2O3, while the molar volume is in the range of 34.2679–40.3849 cm3/mol. The refractive index of the glass samples is in the range of 1.6524–1.6541 with addition of La2O3 concentration. The optical band gap energy is found to be in the range of 3.08–3.14 eV. The transmission spectra for the La2O3 doped borate glasses in the wavelength range 200–2200 nm were reported and the results showed good transparency in visible region. This indicates that the prepared glasses are specifically showing superior transparency to visible light. The mass attenuation coefficient (μ/ρ) was simulated using MCNP code and the simulated data were compared with WinXcom data. The radiation shielding results showed that the different concentrations of La2O3 for the La2O3–B2O3 glass system have affected the μ/ρ of the glasses. Moreover, the sample with 35 mol% of La2O3 has higher μ/ρ compared with the rest of specimens especially at 0.347 MeV. The effective atomic number (Zeff) was also calculated and the highest Zeff values at all selected energies were for the sample with 35 mol% of La2O3, whereas the lowest Zeff were for the sample corresponding to 15 mol% of La2O3, which was 18.86 and 12.31 at 0.347 MeV respectively. The mean free path at 0.347 MeV and 0.511 MeV is very low for 35 mol% of La2O3 (1.88 and 2.70 cm respectively), which indicates that the sample with composition 35La2O3–65B2O3 can be used as effective and transparent photon shieling materials at low energy.