Characterization of six types of Mexican Onyx

Highlights: • Six types of Mexican onyx were obtained from the Zacatecas' semi-desert. • The onyx features were obtained with Vis-UV spectrometry, IR spectroscopy, and EDXRF. • The mass interaction coefficients were calculated with the XCOM code. • Onyx has a good shielding features for photons less than 100 keV. - Abstract: Optical, chemical, and radiation shielding characteristics of 6 types of Mexican onyx from the semi-desert of Zacatecas have been determined. Onyx samples are Yellow, Blue, Brown, Orange, Red and Green. Characterization was carried out using Energy dispersed X-Ray fluorescence, Visible Ultraviolet Spectrometry and Infrared Spectroscopy. With these techniques it was possible to study the chemical, physical and optical characteristics of the Mexican Onyx; from where the elemental composition was obtained, the absorption peaks, the vibrational modes and the optical band gap. As well as the interactions of these materials with radiation was studied. From this last study we obtained the Mass interaction coefficient for the coherent and incoherent dispersion, the photoelectric effect, the Compton scattering and the pair production, in the atomic nucleus and the electron field. For all types of onyx the total mass attenuation coefficients are alike showing a resonance due to K-shell of Ca. Mexican onyx has a good shielding features to photons of energy less than 100 keV because the most probable event is the photoelectric effect.