Optical features and nuclear radiation shielding efficiency of ZnO-B₂O₃-Ta₂O₅ glasses

This paper reports the optical features and nuclear radiation shielding efficiency of 40ZnO–(60-x)B₂O₃–xTa₂O₅, (0 < x ≤ 4) glasses. The optical features of these glasses were examined by evaluating different factors including molar refraction, metallization criterion, molar polarizability, dielectric coefficients (static and optical), optical transmission, and reflection loss. The nuclear radiation shielding efficiency of the tested glasses was estimated by using Geant4 simulations and the XCOM program for varied photons energies. The linear attenuation coefficient and other related factors such as half value layer, effective atomic number, mean free path, electron total stopping powers, and electron continuous slowing down approximation range were calculated over a wide energy range from 15 keV to 15 MeV. The results revealed that the optical dielectric constant of the glasses increased from 1.6536 to 1.6962 as the Ta₂O₅ increased from 0 to 4 mol%. A notable increase in μ values was observed as the Ta₂O₅ increased from 0 to 4 mol%. The photon shielding properties of the tested glasses were compared with many samples in terms of MFP. The present glasses showed promising features to apply for optical and radiation shielding applications. (paper)