Investigation of Radiation Shielding Efficacy of Vanadium–Tellurite–Antimonite Semiconducting Glasses

Abstract Effects of antimony trioxide (Sb2O3) on neutron and gamma-radiation shielding parameters of tellurite vanadio-antimonite glasses with compositions 40TeO2-(60-x)V2O5-xSb2O3: 0 ≤ xSb2O3 ≤ 10 mol% coded as (TVS0-TVS10) were investigated. The mass attenuation coefficients (MAC) were evaluated using the Monte Carlo simulation code (MCNP-5) and WinXcom program for photon energies in the range of 15 keV to 15 MeV. The SRIM program was used to compute the stopping power and projected range of the charged particles, such as proton and alpha particles, on the investigated glass samples. Based on the theoretically evaluated MAC, some shielding parameters were computed, such as linear attenuation coefficient, electric cross-section, atomic cross-section, effective atomic number, half-value thickness (HVT), and the mean free path. The EXABCal program was applied to predict the level of the photons accumulation in the investigated glass samples (buildup factors). The effective cross-section for fast neutrons was computed theoretically based on the fast neutron effective removal cross-section (ΣR ) for the constituting components. Results revealed that the maximum values of MAC exceed in the range between 28.9-31.3 cm2/g with increasing the Sb2O3 substitution ratio between 0-10 mol %, respectively. In contrast, the HVT values decrease with an increase in the increment of Sb2O3 rate. The maximum (ΣR) was obtained for glass coded TVS0 among the investigated glasses. Results concluded that the higher Sb2O3 concentration in TVS glasses leads to an increase in their capability to apply in several radiation shielding applications.