Impact of Fluoride modifiers on Sm3+ ions doped Phospho-Borate glasses for radiation shielding applications

Abstract

The conservative melt quenching method has been applied to fabricate a set of glass samples with the composition 49P₂O₅+25B₂O₃+10 KF+15XF+1Sm₂O₃, where X is replaced by the metals Mg, Sr, Li, Zn and Ba. The prepared glass samples are named as PBKSm:X. The pattern of XRD affirms the presence of a non-crystalline nature, and the FTIR identifies the existence of various stretching of all the functional groups in the present glasses. The density (3.221 g/cm³) and bond density (10.5 $\times$ 10²⁸ m⁻³) of the PBKSm:BaF glass exhibit greater values, which implies the compactness and high mechanical strength. The $d_{B-B}$ and $d_{P-P}$ found to be increased when the element with the highest ionic radius (Ba) is introduced. The least elastic modulus values of the PBKSm:BaF glass sample exhibit the fact that the replacement of BaF inhibits the deformation ratio. The Monte Carlo simulation method was used to evaluate the shielding capability of the glasses. The study found that the linear attenuation coefficient of the prepared glasses the varied throughout the 15.868–0.362 cm⁻¹ (for the PBKSm:LiF glass), 17.091–0.374 cm⁻¹ (for the PBKSm:MgF glass), 38.906–0.434 cm⁻¹ (for the PBKSm:ZnF glass), 24.477–0.491 cm⁻¹ (for the PBKSm:SrF glass), and 43.674–0.713 cm⁻¹ (for the PBKSm:BaF glass) when the γ-ray energy raised throughout 0.015 MeV and 1.5 MeV, respectively. The shielding parameter values suggest that, compared to other glasses, BaF- incorporated glass consistently exhibits improved shielding efficiency.