The impact of gamma-ray on physical and optical characteristics of bismuth borate glasses doped with cobalt and copper

The study focused on investigating the optical absorption properties of bismuth borate glass samples, including characteristics such as Urbach energy, steepness parameter, optical band gap, and refractive index. Bismuth borate glasses were made using the standard melting procedure, with separate doping of cobalt and copper. The optical absorption of the glass samples, both before and after being exposed to gamma-ray radiation, indicates that the doped transition metal ions exist in an octahedral state and function as modifiers by enhancing the level of disorder in the glass matrix where wavelengths of 297 nm and 390 nm, and another peak at 451 nm were detected for Cu+ ions in the glass matrix beside two peaks at 540 nm and 720 nm which are attributed to cupreous ions with octahedral coordination. While wavelengths at 220, 348, and 465 nm were appeared in case of adding cobalt oxide, with the peak at 483 nm indicating an octahedral form of cobalt ions. The investigation of the impact of various gamma-ray dosages on the distinct characteristics of the manufactured glass samples has been examined. The samples exhibit slight variations in absorbance when exposed to varying levels of gammaray irradiation, indicating that these glasses are very suitable for immobilizing low levels of radiation. In addition, calculations were performed for the mean free path, effective atomic number, half-value layer, and radiation protection efficiency. The findings demonstrated that glass incorporating Cu exhibited the most effective shielding outcomes within the photon energy range of 1-10 MeV where the linear attenuation coefficient values increased from 0.319 cm2/g for a glass containing CoO to 0.344 cm2/g for a glass containing CuO at an energy of 1.333 MeV.