Newly developed glasses containing Si/Cd/Li/Gd and their high performance for radiation applications: role of Er2O3

Abstract

Recently, many studies trended to develop new glass systems to serve for various radiation applications. In this article, we report on the radiation attenuation and shielding performance of the Er/Cd/Li/Gd/Si glass system in the chemical form of 50SiO(2)center dot 30Li(2)O center dot(19 - x)CdO center dot 1Gd(2)O(3)center dot xEr(2)O(3) (here, 0 <= x >= 2.5 mol%). The shielding performance (LAC, MAC, MFP, EAC, HVL, EBF, EABF, and FNRC) is investigated by using the Monte Carlo method (via Geant4 simulations) and theoretical calculations (via Phy-X approach). The obtained results indicate that the Er2O3 addition has a significant influence on the attenuation performance of the present glasses. We also found that the maximum (minimum) value of MAC is obtained at photon energy of 15 keV (10 meV) with the corresponding value of 20.537 (0.028), 22.525 (0.0283), 24.44 (0.0287), 26.286 (0.0290), and 28.067 (0.0293) cm(2)/g for SLGC-E1, SLGC-E2, SLGC-E3, SLGC-E4, and SLGC-E5 respectively. This rivals the performance of commercial glass shields (RS-253), concretes (ordinary and barite), and recently developed and studied glass (TBZP10 glass). It can be concluded that the SLGC-E5 glassy material has promising attenuation properties to use for the radiation shielding applications.