Novel Li2O-BaO-PbO-B2O3 glasses: physical, structural, optical, gamma ray shielding, and fast neutron features

The impact of the insertion of Pb2+ ions into the Li2O-BaO-B2O3 based glass matrix has been investigated. The Archimedes' method was used to determine the density (rho) and, as a result, the molar volume (V-m) of the samples. The rho of the glasses increased from 2.917 to 5.003 (g/cm(3)), and the V-m increased from 24.155 to 27.074 (cm(3)/mol). The optical band gap of the samples was determined based on their UV-visible spectra. The structural study of the present glasses has been carried out by XRD patterns and FTIR spectra analysis. Numerous theoretical methods were used to calculate some parameters such as ionic radius, optical basicity, non-linear refractive index, and oxide ion polarizability. The mass attenuation coefficient MAC was obtained experimentally as well as theoretically by the Phy-X/PSD software programs and the obtained results were in very good agreement. The half-value layer HVL, mean free path (MFP), effective atomic number (Z(eff)), atomic cross-sections and electron cross-sections were evaluated for all the present glass samples. In addition, exposure build-up factor and energy exposure build-up factor were estimated for each glass up to penetration depths of 40 MFP. Moreover, the effective neutron removal cross-section ((R)) was also calculated. The shielding properties of the prepared glass samples were compared with different concrete shielding materials, and commercial glasses, therefore, the prepared glasses outperformed all the aforementioned materials in terms of gamma ray shielding ability.