Optical and radiation shielding characteristics of tellurite glass doped with different rare-earth oxides

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Alqahtani, Mohammed S.^{a; b; *} | Hussein, Khalid I.^{a; c} | Afifi, Hesham^d | Reben, Manuela^e | Grelowska, Iwona^e | Zahran, Heba Y.^{f; g; h} | Yahia, I.S.^{f; g; h} | Yousef, El Sayed^{f; g; i}

Affiliations: [a] Department of Radiological Sciences, College of Applied Medical Sciences, King Khalid University, Abha, Saudi Arabia | [b] BioImaging Unit, Space Research Centre, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK | [c] Department of Medical Physics and Instrumentation, National Cancer Institute, University of Gezira, Wad Medani, Sudan | [d] Ultarsonic Laboratory, National Institute for Standards, El-Giza, Egypt | [e] Faculty of Materials Science and Ceramics, AGH – University of Science and Technology, Cracow, Poland | [f] Research Center for Advanced Materials Science (RCAMS), King Khalid University, Abha, Saudi Arabia | [g] Department of Physics, King Khalid University, Abha, Saudi Arabia | [h] Nanoscience Laboratory for Environmental and Bio-Medical Applications (NLEBA), Semiconductor Lab., Metallurgical Lab. 2 Physics Department, Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt | [i] Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, Al Azhar University, Assiut branch, Egypt

Correspondence: [*] Corresponding author: Mohammed S. Alqahtani, Department of Radiological Sciences, College of Applied Medical Sciences, King Khalid University, Abha 61421, Saudi Arabia. E-mail: mosalqhtani@kku.edu.sa.

Abstract: Shielding glass materials doped with heavy metal oxides show an improvement in the effectiveness of the materials used in radiation shielding. In this work, the photon shielding parameters of six tellurite glass systems doped with several metal oxides namely, 70TeO2-10P2O5- 10ZnO- 5.0PbF2- 0.0024Er2O3- 5.0X (where X represents different doped metail oxides namely, Nb2O5, TiO2, WO3, PbO, Bi2O3, and CdO) in a broad energy spectrum, ranging from 0.015 MeV to 15 MeV, were evaluated. The shielding parameters were calculated using the online software Phy-X/PSD. The highest linear and mass attenuation coefficients recorded were obtaibed from the samples containing bismuth oxide (Bi2O3), and the lowest half-value layer and mean free path were recorded among the other samples. Furthermore, the shielding effectiveness of tellurite glass systems was compared with commercial shielding materials (RS-369, RS-253 G18, chromite, ferrite, magnetite, and barite). The optical parameters viz, dispersion energy, single-oscillator energy, molar refraction, electronic polarizability, non-linear refractive indices, n2, and third-order susceptibility were measured and reported at a different wavelength. Bi2O3 has a strong effect on enhancing the optical and shielding properties. The outcome of this study suggests the potential of using the proposed glass samples as radiation-shielding materials for a broad range of imaging and therapeutic applications.

Keywords: Radiation shielding, oxide glass, optical parameters, half value layer, mean free path, mass attenuation, exposure buildup factor (EBF)

DOI: 10.3233/XST-211017

Journal: Journal of X-Ray Science and Technology, vol. 30, no. 2, pp. 293-305, 2022