A new protective glass material against gamma ray: Thorough analysis to determine the impact of adding gadolinium (III) oxide

This work presents a study of the effect of replacing lead dioxide and gadolinium (III) oxide with boron trioxide on the physical, mechanical, and radiation shielding properties for the BO-NaO-ZnO-PbO-GdO glass systems. The Archimedes method confirms that the increase in the PbO+GdO concentration within the fabricated glass system in the range from 16 to 22 mol.% increases the fabricated glass samples' density from 4.052 to 4.408 g/cm. Additionally, the Makishima-Mackenzie model was utilized to investigate the influence of PbO+GdO on the mechanical properties of the investigated glass samples. The increase in the substituting of PbO+GdO decreases the fabricated glass samples' mechanical properties and micro-hardness. Furthermore, the Monte Carlo simulation method was applied for the estimation of the impact of PbO+GdO concentration on the fabricated samples' radiation shielding parameters. The increase in the concentration of PbO+GdO with range of (16, 18, 20 and 22) leads to increase the linear attenuation coefficient (LAC) to 8.014–11.517 cm at 0.06 MeV, 0.381–0.423 cm at 0.6 MeV, 0.133–0.149 cm at 5 MeV, and 0.132–0.154 cm at 15 MeV with the same order, respectively. Therefore, the introduction of PbO+GdO concentration enhances the fabricated glass samples' radiation shielding properties to be suitable for γ-ray shielding applications.