Abstract
This study explored the zinc-boro-vanadate (ZBV) glass reinforced with Ag
2
O to show radiation shielding competencies. A glass system with composition
20ZnO-55B
2
O
3
-(25-x)V
2
O
5
-xAg
2
O
, where x ranges from 0 to 10 with the steps of 2.5 mol%, was designed. Some physical and optical calculations were employed to figure out glass density (
ρ
glass
), molar volume (
V
m
), oxygen molar volume (
OMV
), oxygen packing density (
OPD
), refractive index (
n
), dielectric constant (
ϵ
), and metalization criterion (
M
) for the glass system of ZBV0 to ZBV10. According to the findings, one can specify that the increasing content of Ag
2
O enhanced both the physical and optical features of the ZBV series. The glass density was increased from 3.3150 to 3.6930 g/cm
3
, while the refractive index was raised from 3.0693 to 3.1216 with the insertion ratio of Ag
2
O from 0 to 10 mol%. The ZBV10 sample having the maximum Ag
2
O of 10 mol% ensured to improve physical and optical properties. The shielding properties of the examined glass samples were investigated to evaluate their ability for radiation protection purposes. The Monte Carlo N-Particle Transport Code 5 (MCNP-5) was utilized to assess the projected gamma photons' average track length on the investigated glass samples. Then, the linear attenuation coefficient (LAC), half-value layer (HVL), transmission factor (TF), and radiation protection efficiency (RPE) were calculated based on the simulated gamma photons' average track length. The obtained results showed that the highest LAC values increased from 71.999 to 91.979 cm
−1
. Moreover, the thicker HVL decreased from 9.869 to 9.332 cm
−1
, increasing the Ag
2
O insertion ratio between 0 and 10 mol%, respectively. The mentioned data confirmed that substitution of the V
2
O
5
by the Ag
2
O enhance the gamma-ray shielding capacity of the explored series of glass.