PbO–Sb2O3–B2O3–CuO glassy system: Evaluation of optical, gamma and neutron shielding properties

For a PbO–Sb2O3–B2O3–CuO glass system, optical, gamma and neutron shielding properties have been comprehensively examined. The absorbance of the recent glasses positively correlated to the increase in PbO content. Our results show that both the band gap and refractive index remain nearly unchanged with PbO content. Adopting NISTXCOM within an energy photon range of 0.015–15 MeV, the shielding parameters were evaluated for glass samples. The results from MAC outline good compliance with the obtained values using FLUKA codes and Phy-X/PSD. Comparatively higher density (4.81 g/cm3), greater shielding parameters values were all achieved for 35PbO–5Sb2O3–60B2O3-0.5CuO (PSBC5). 31.2, 35.6, 44.9, 55.1, and 66.3 cm2/g values are the mass attenuation coefficient of PS PSBC1, PSBC2, PSBC3, PSBC4, and PSBC5 glasses at 0.015 MeV. This indicating that PSBC5 sample is the superior gamma shield. In addition, the calculated effective removal cross-sections for fast neutrons observe that the PSBC5sample has commensurately greater ΣR (=0.113 cm−1).