Radiation shielding and mechanical properties of Bi2O3–Na2O–TiO2–ZnO–TeO2 glass system

Highlights: • The MAC at 0.284 MeV of the glass with 5 mol% of Bi₂O₃ is equal to 0.2083 cm²/g. • The RPE of the glasses was enhanced with the addition of the Bi₂O₃. • The transmitted percentage of the photons decreases with increasing the thickness. Recently, heavy metal oxides (HMO) based glass systems attracted great attention to the scientific community to be used as an alternative to the conventional lead, lead composites and concrete based materials for protection of harmful radiation. In this work, we report the role of Bi₂O₃ on the mechanical and radiation shielding properties of Bi₂O₃–ZnO–TiO₂–Na₂O–TeO₂ glass system as well as its mechanical behaviour. The mechanical properties of the glasses were calculated using Makishima-Mackenzie model and different shielding factors have been calculated using Monte Carlo simulation via Geant4 code and also using Phy-X software. The mechanical properties based on Makishima-Mackenzie model depend on the values of packing density (V_i) and dissociation energy (G_i) of the oxide constituents. The simulated values of the mass attenuation coefficient showed a good agreement between both approaches. The mass attenuation coefficient (MAC) at 0.284 MeV of the glass with 5 mol% of Bi₂O₃ is equal to 0.2083 cm²/g, at 0.662 MeV its equal to 0.0785 cm²/g, while at 1.33 MeV, its MAC is 0.0501 cm²/g. The transmitted percentage of the photons through the proposed glasses was found to rise with increasing the energy of the photon, while decreasing with rising the thickness of the glass sample. The transmission factor (TF) revealed that the greater the thickness of the glass, the lower the TF, and the better the shield. Also, the radiation protection efficiency of the glasses was enhanced with the addition of the Bi₂O₃. The glass sample with composition of 15Bi₂O₃–10ZnO–5TiO₂–5Na₂O–65TeO₂ possesses the highest effective atomic number among the studied compositions and showed the lowest half value layer. From the obtained data, Bi₂O₃ seems to be a strong candidate for enhancing the gamma radiation attenuation factors in the bismuth-based tellurite glasses.