Synthesis of transparent binary germanate glasses and determination of their shielding performance against the gamma radiation

ABSTRACT

In this study, we synthesized binary germanate glasses with compositions of GeO₂ – Bi₂O₃, GeO₂ – PbF₂, and GeO₂ – V₂O₅. The traditional melt-quenching method was used for glass synthesis. The radiation shielding properties of the synthesized samples were calculated theoretically and measured experimentally as well. A narrow-beam transmission geometry, which uses a NaI(Tl) detector, was employed to measure linear attenuation coefficient, mass attenuation coefficient, half-value layer, and effective atomic number values of the glasses at gamma-ray energies of 662, 1173, and 1332 keV and, ¹³⁷Cs, and ⁶⁰Co radioactive point sources were used to produce gamma-ray photons of these energies. Additionally, all the above parameters were also calculated theoretically using the WinXCOM software in the 0.015-15 MeV energy range to confirm the accuracy of the measurements. A good agreement between theoretical and experimental findings was observed. It was also found that the increase in the concentrations of Bi₂O₃, PbF_2, and V₂O₅ network modifiers improved the radiation shielding capacity of synthesized germanate glasses. The results revealed that the GeBi30 glass has superior shielding properties among the synthesized germanate glasses.

KEYWORDS:

• Germanate glasses
• gamma-ray
• shielding performance
• WinXCOM

Acknowledgment

The current study has been supported by the Scientific Research Projects Council of the Kafkas University (Project # 2020-FM-06).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Kafkas Üniversitesi: [Grant Number 2020-FM-06].

Notes on contributors

Gökhan Bilir

Dr. Gokhan Bilir is an Associate Professor of Physics at Kafkas University. He received his PhD degree in Physics Engineering from Istanbul Technical University and MSc degree in Physics from Kafkas University. He has diverse research interest in synthesis and characterization optical materials like glasses, nanocrystals, bulk crystals. He has authored book chapters and publishes many research articles in prestigious international journals.

İlyas Çağlar

İlyas Cağlar is an Lecturer in the Department of Electricity and Energy at Kazım Karabekir Vocational School of Technical Sciences, Kafkas University, Kars, Turkey. The author received MS degree in the department of Physics from the Kafkas University, Kars, Turkey. His research interests include gamma-ray detectors, radiation measurements and shielding and dosimetry calculations.

Gülçin Bilgici Cengiz

Gulcin Bilgici Cengiz received her Ph.D. from Essex University in 2000. In 1996 and 2000, she worked experimentally on laser-plasma physics at the Rutherford Appleton laboratory. Current research interests are the study of environmental radioactivity and gamma radiation shielding of materials.

Hüseyin Ertap

Assoc. Prof. Huseyin Ertap received his Ph.D. degree in 2015 from the Department of Physics at Kafkas University in Kars, Turkey. Since 2019, he has been an associate professor at Department of Physics at Faculty of Science and Letters, Kafkas University. Dr. Ertap, has published several articles in prestigious international journals mostly on structural, electrical, optical and nonlinear properties of layered crystals and glass-ceramics. His current research fields are crystal growth, glass-ceramic synthesis and their structural, electrical, optical characterization.