Erbium oxide and Cerium oxide-doped borosilicate glasses as radiation shielding material

In this paper, the radiation shielding parameters such as linear attenuation coefficients (LAC, µ), mass attenuation coefficients (MAC, µ/ρ), effective atomic numbers (Zeff), effective electron densities (Neff), half value of layers (HVL) and mean free paths (MFP) were investigated for rare earth metal oxides (CeO2 and Er2O3) doped borosilicate (BS) glasses. The glass samples were manufactured by the mechanical alloying process CeO2, Er2O3, and BS powders. The radiation shielding parameters of the BS glass samples were determined at photon energies in the energy region of 22.16–59.54 keV using a high purity germanium detector. The theoretical results for MAC were obtained from WinXCom program. It was observed that theoretical and experimental results are compatible with each other. The radiation absorption increased with increasing the concentration of CeO2 and Er2O3 in the BS samples due to high density increasing with the concentration of CeO2 and Er2O3, which are high atomic mass. Furthermore, LAC, MAC, Zeff, and Neff values for CeO2 and Er2O3 doped BS glass decreased with increasing photon energy. While the MAC value at 59.54 keV energy level for pure BS sample was 0.242 cm2/g, it increased to 0.624 cm2/g with CeO2 addition and 0.838 cm2/g with the addition of Er2O3. The Zeff and Neff values of glass samples with Er2O3 were bigger than CeO2 doped glass samples owing to high atomic number. Consequently, it was determined that BS-Er2O3 glasses had better the radiation shielding capacity than BS-CeO2 glasses.