Evaluation of radiation shielding capacity of vanadium–tellurite–antimonite semiconducting glasses

Abstract

Effects of antimony trioxide (Sb2O3) on the shielding features of ternary tellurite-vanadium- antimonite glasses were investigated. The glasses chemical composition are described by 40TeO2-(60-x) V2O5-xSb2O3: 0 ≤ xSb2O3 ≤10 mol%. The mass attenuation coefficients (MAC) were simulated using Monte Carlo simulation code (MCNP- 5) and estimated theoretically via WinXcom program for 15 keV up to 15 MeV photon energy. Alpha and proton stopping power and projected range were computed utilizing the SRIM program. Furthermore, other effective shielding parameters like linear attenuation coefficient (LAC), desired shield thickness, and effective atomic number were calculated relying on the estimated MAC values. The photon’s accumulation within the studied glasses in terms of buildup factors has been estimated via the EXABCal program. The MAC shielding capacity’s output findings revealed an increment from 28.9 to 31.3 cm2/g with increasing the Sb2O3 ratio from 0 to 10 mol %, respectively. The glass samples coded TVS0 recorded the largest (ΣR) among all studied samples. Results concluded that raising the Sb2O3 insertion ratio is significantly enhances the TVS shielding capacity. Thus, the investigated glass samples are good candidates for several nuclear protection applications.