Optical and radiation shielding characteristics of tellurite glass doped with different rare-earth oxides

Shielding glass materials doped with heavy metal oxides show an improvement in the effectiveness of the materials used in radiation shielding. In this work, the photon shielding parameters of six tellurite glass systems doped with several metal oxides namely, 70TeO2-10P2O5- 10ZnO- 5.0PbF2- 0.0024Er2O3- 5.0X (where X represents different doped metail oxides namely, Nb2O5, TiO2, WO3, PbO, Bi2O3, and CdO) in a broad energy spectrum, ranging from 0.015 MeV to 15 MeV, were evaluated. The shielding parameters were calculated using the online software Phy-X/PSD. The highest linear and mass attenuation coefficients recorded were obtaibed from the samples containing bismuth oxide (Bi2O3), and the lowest half-value layer and mean free path were recorded among the other samples. Furthermore, the shielding effectiveness of tellurite glass systems was compared with commercial shielding materials (RS-369, RS-253 G18, chromite, ferrite, magnetite, and barite). The optical parameters viz, dispersion energy, single-oscillator energy, molar refraction, electronic polarizability, non-linear refractive indices, n2, and third-order susceptibility were measured and reported at a different wavelength. Bi2O3 has a strong effect on enhancing the optical and shielding properties. The outcome of this study suggests the potential of using the proposed glass samples as radiation-shielding materials for a broad range of imaging and therapeutic applications.