Barium-lead-borosilicate glass containing lanthanum oxide: Fabrication, physical properties, and photon shielding characteristics

Abstract

In our work, we studied the impact of lanthanum oxide (La2O3) on barium-lead-borosilicate (BLBS) glass systems in terms of physical properties and photon shielding characteristics. With this motivation, we aimed at synthesizing a BLBS glass system with a composition of 6Na(2)O-0.8MgO-0.25Al(2)O(3)-(55-y)SiO2-11B(2)O(3)-7.3CaO-13BaO-0.83SrO-5.75PbO-yLa(2)O(3), (y: 0, 5, 10, and 20 wt%), via traditional melting techniques. The fabricated glass samples, La-0 to La-20, were analyzed using some characterization techniques, including Archimedes' principle and spectroscopic gamma-rays experiment. According to the measurements, one can observe that all glass series show a transparent appearance irrespective of varying La2O3 content. On the other hand, the increasing La2O3 insertion ratio has a favorable influence on glass density (rho(glass)). That is, rho(glass) increases from 2.9419 to 3.3479 g.cm(-3) in subjection to the amount of La2O3 from 0 to 20 wt%. Similarly, molar volumes (V-m) for the La-series are found to be in an inclining behavior, namely, from 23.52 to 25.46 cm(3) mol(-1). With regards to the gamma-rays (356, 511, 661.7, 1173, 1275, and 1332 keV) attenuation characteristics, the linear attenuation coefficient (LAC) values obtained for the lowest energy by experimental and simulation methods for La-0 to La-20 samples were found in the range from 0.3298 to 0.4175 cm(-1) and 0.3349 to 0.3992 cm(-1), respectively. Similarly, the LAC for all energies increased as the La2O3 additive ratio increased; that is, the La-20 sample had the highest protection ability. In addition, we found out a good agreement among the FLUKA, XCOM, and experiments. Lastly, the LAC values of La2O3 added glass samples were compared with some concrete used for shielding, commercially available protection glasses, and some recent studies in the literature. The results showed that our glass samples, especially the La-20 glass sample, can be used as a potential candidate for photon shielding applications.