Radiation attenuation and optical features of lithium borate glasses containing barium: B2O3.Li2O.BaO

Abstract The influence of BaO on the optical characteristics and nuclear radiation shielding properties for 60B2O3-(40-x)Li2O-xBaO: x = 0, 5, 10, 15, and 20 mol% glasses was investigated. Various optical parameters such as optical transmission and reflection loss (TOptical, RLoss), molar refraction and molar polarizability (RMolar, αMolar), optical and static dielectric coefficients and metallization criterion (eOptical, eStatic, MCriterion), and metallization property according to refractive index and optical energy gap (M(nLinear), M(EOptical)), were determined. The results confirmed that RMolar changes directly with αMolar, while TOptical changes inversely with RLoss. The mass attenuation coefficient (μ/ρ) was investigated using WinXCOM software and the results showed that all the S1–S5 glasses have good attenuation ability at 284 keV due to their high mass attenuation coefficients (μ/ρ). The highest and lowest values of μ/ρ occurred at 284 keV and 1.33 MeV respectively and varied between 0.1055 and 0.1361 cm2/g and 0.0526–0.0534 cm2/g. The linear attenuation coefficient (μ) increased with the gradual addition of BaO from glass S1→S5. The results showed that the effective atomic number (Zeff) for S1 is almost constant, while S5 possessed the highest Zeff values. The half value layer (HVL) was estimated and the effect of BaO on this parameter was analyzed. At 284 keV, the HVL values were 2.8192, 2.3847, 2.1597, 1.9687 and 1.8936 cm for S1–S5 glasses respectively. The S5 sample possessed the least HVL, and accordingly, had better attenuation capabilities than the S1–S4 samples. Therefore, lithium borate glasses with high concentration of BaO can be applied in several optical and medical applications.