An extensive investigation of physical, optical and radiation shielding properties for borate glasses modified with gadolinium oxide

We prepared four Gd₂O₃ doped borate glasses and investigated their physical, optical and radiation shielding features. The density of glass samples was increased linearly with the Gd₂O₃ content. The transmission spectra of the samples show more than 85% transmittance suggesting their superior transparency in the visible region. The band gap decreases with increase in Gd₂O₃ content. The Geant4 code was used to find the attenuation factor for the samples between 0.284 and 2.506 MeV. The results demonstrated that the transmission factor changes from 51% (corresponding to 20 mol% of Gd₂O₃) to 39% (for 35 mol%) at 0.284 MeV. The addition of Gd₂O₃ affects highly the mass attenuation parameter at 0.284 and 0.347 MeV. The effective atomic numbers of the glass sample corresponding to 20 mol% of Gd₂O₃ are in the range 12.06–18.79. The maximum tenth value layer was observed for 20 mol% of Gd₂O₃ sample (15.768 cm).