Impact of calcium content on optical properties and radiation shielding performance of lithium antimony borate glasses

This paper investigates the influence of calcium doping on optical properties and radiation shielding of lithium antimony borate glasses described by xCaO:10Li₂O: (70-x)B₂O₃: 20Sb₂O₃, with x = 0, 5, and 10 mol% with codes of CLSB₁, CLSB₂, and CLSB₃, respectively. The optical parameters and factors of these borate glasses are determined based on the value of the refractive index. In addition, FLUKA is used to simulate the behavior of radiation in a wide range of shielding scenarios, and optimize the design of radiation shielding systems for the borate glasses involved. The obtained reflection loss R^loss and Optical transmission T^opt in this study displayed an inverse relationship to each other as the molar fraction of CaO increases in the CLBSx glass system. The computed values for MAC and LAC varied from 0.21696 to 0.05357 cm²g^-1 and 0.73333 to 0.18107 cm⁻¹ for CLSB1, 0.21789 to 0.05360 cm²g^-1 and 0.78660 to 0.19348 cm⁻¹ for CLSB2, 0.21884 to 0.05362 cm²g^-1 and 0.82502 to 0.20214 cm⁻¹ for CLSB3. The obtained findings reveal that the developed glass system under this study competes favorably with the commercial glasses. For example, CLSB₁, CLSB₂, and CLSB₃ display superior shielding characteristics to RS 323 G19,RS 360 and RS 520 at the photon energy 0.2 MeV except R 253 and RS 323 G19 at energy MeV and to all the commercial glasses at energies 0.662 (¹³⁷Cs) and 1.25 (⁶⁰Co) MeV.