Experimental Study on the Radiation Shielding Performance of B₂O₃-SiO₂-TeO₂-Bi₂O₃-ZnO-BaO Glass Systems Containing Europium (III) Oxide

Abstract

The radiation shielding abilities of europium oxide doped bismuth tellurium barium zinc borosilicate glasses were investigated. Five glass samples, denoted as BiTeEu-0, BiTeEu-1, BiTeEu-2, BiTeEu-3, and BiTeEu-4, were assessed to determine their effectiveness in shielding against incident photon energies of 356, 662, 1173, and 1332 KeV. The glass composition was 12B2O3 - 16SiO2-xEu2O3-(40-x)TeO2-12Bi2O3-12ZnO-8BaO, where x ranged from 0 to 4 mol%. In order to assess the effectiveness of the prepared glass systems as radiation shields, several numerical parameters were experimentally measured. These parameters included the linear attenuation coefficient (LAC) and other relevant factors. In order to validate the experimental setup, the LAC values were determined theoretically using WinXCOM software. This provided an opportunity to compare the experimental results with the theoretical values, allowing for the accuracy of the measurements to be assessed. The theoretical and experimental LAC values were identical, indicating the reliability of the experimental setup. A declining trend was found for the value of mean free path (MFP) as - BiTeEu-0 (0 mol % Eu2O3)> BiTeEu-1 (1 mol % Eu2O3)> BiTeEu-2 (2 mol % Eu2O3)> BiTeEu-3 (3 mol % Eu2O3)> BiTeEu-4 (4 mol % Eu2O3) from energy 0.06 MeV to 1.332 MeV.