Synthesis and radiation properties of Li2O-BaO-Bi2O3-P2O5 glasses

Abstract The effects of BaO on the radiation properties of Li2O-BaO-Bi2O3-P2O5 glasses, where x = 10, 15, 20, 25 and 30 mol%, have been studied. The glasses were synthesized by the conventional melt-quenching technique at 1000 °C for 2 hours using (NH4)2HPO4, Li2CO3, Ba2CO3 and Bi2O3 as starting materials. The visual inspections of all synthesized glasses with different concentration of BaO and Bi2O3 have a good optical transparency. The radiation parameters of the glasses have been measured experimentally and compared with those determined from theoretical calculation using WinXCom program. The results show that the mass attenuation coefficient was decreased with increasing of BaO concentration owing to the decrease of photoelectric absorption. However, Compton scattering gives the dominant contribution to the total mass attenuation coefficient for studied glass samples. The mass attenuation coefficients (μm), the effective atomic numbers (Zeff), and the effective electron densities (Ne) were decreased with the increase of BaO concentrations. The synthesized glasses were investigated and compared with the shielding concretes and glasses in terms of half value layer (HVL). The HVL value of synthesized glasses shows better than some shielding concretes with an advantage of being transparent to visible light