Behavior of silver tellurite glasses against gamma rays, neutrons, and ions using theoretical and the PHITS Monte Carlo method

Abstract

Present work analyze the ionizing radiations attenuation behaviour, photon trajectories and dose rate reduction properties of silver tellurite glasses to investigate their potential application in radiation shielding. The shielding capability of five glass systems with different elemental compositions have been calculated with the help of theoretical software: Phy-X/PSD and NIST XCOM. For the photon energy range of 1.00 keV to 100.00 GeV, various shielding parameters are calculated, including attenuation coefficients ($MAC$, $LAC$), mean free path, half value layer, tenth value layer, effective atomic number, effective electron density, energy build up factors, energy absorption buildup factors, and fast neutron removal cross section. While the energy stopping potentials, projected range of ions (H$^{+}$, He$^{+}$, and C$^{+}$) has been presented with the help of SRIM software. Additionally photon trajectories and dose rate attenuating behavior of 10$^5$ photons generated from $^{137}$Cs and $^{60}$Co sources with activity 200.00 GBq has been studied with the help of particle and heavy ion transport (PHITS) code. It is observed that at both low and high energy levels, the glass composition, labelled S$_4$, (70TeO$_{2}$-25Ag$_2$O-2Nb$_{2}$O$_5$-2BaO-1PbO), exhibits comparable attenuation coefficients to previously recommended glass samples for radiation shielding applications. In addition to S$_4$, nine different types of glass samples and polymers with comparable densities to our glass sample, along with water, were included for comparison. The findings indicate that among all the samples tested, S$_4$ demonstrates the highest and comparable radiation-protective performance, positioning it favourably for such applications.