Investigation of photon attenuation factors for TeO₂-Bi₂O₃–B₂O₃ glass systems using SRIM codes, EPICS2017 library and Phy-X/PSD

We aimed to examine the photon shielding characteristics of the TeO₂-Bi₂O₃-B₂O₃ ternary glass system using EPICS2017 library and Phy-X/PSD software. Seven glass systems, TeBiB1-TeBiB7, with varying TeO₂, Bi₂O₃, and B₂O₃ compositions were examined. The mass attenuation coefficient (MAC) evaluated with EPICS2017 (MAC_EPICS2017) is slightly lower than MAC derived from Phy-X/PSD software (MAC_Phy-X/PSD) by an average of 0.24%. MAC_EPICS2017 is in good agreement with MAC_Phy-X/PSD at all the examined energies. Substituting an atom fraction of Bi₂O₃ with TeO₂ and/or B₂O₃ resulted in the decrease of the total atomic cross-section of the glass, which in turn decreases the MAC. The linear attenuation coefficient (LAC) has comparatively higher values in the low energy zone (1.034–1.563 cm⁻¹ at 0.347 MeV), and the lowest values were reported at 2.506 MeV (in order of 0.2 cm⁻¹). TeBiB1 has relatively higher LAC than TeBiB2-TeBiB7 glasses, whereas TeBiB6 and TeBiB7 glasses have nearly the same LAC and they possess lower LAC than the remaining glasses. The half-value layer (HVL) at 0.347 MeV takes the following values: 0.443 cm for TeBiB1, 0.532 cm for TeBiB2, 0.537 cm for TeBiB3, 0.541 cm for TeBiB4, 0.545 cm for TeBiB5, 0.670 cm for TeBiB6 and 0.670 cm for TeBiB7. The sequence of HVL is TeBiB6 > TeBiB7 > TeBiB2 > TeBiB3 > TeBiB4 > TeBiB5 > TeBiB1. The tenth value layer results revealed that the TeBiB1- TeBiB7 samples are good attenuators to the low energetic radiation. We found that TeBiB1 has the thinnest TVL (equals 4.439 cm, at 0.826 MeV), while TeBiB6 has the thickest TVL. (author)