Abstract
Optical materials based glasses started to gain much attention due to its thermal and mechanical stability besides its friendly environment, especially in radiation shielding applications. In this work, we synthesized a series of five glasses using melt-quenching-annealing method. The glasses were synthesized was boro-silicate glasses with the composition of (40−x−y) B2O3 - 10 SiO2 - 10 Al2O3 - 30 ZnO - 10 Li2O - x Er2O3 - y Yb2O3, were (x = 1.0 mol %) and (y = 0.5, 1.0, 1.5, 2.0, and 2.5). Specific physical properties for those glasses have been measured and calculated based on related formulas. X−ray diffraction has been utilized to study the glassy nature of these materials, Raman spectrometer study was used to explore the structure of the fabricated glasses. Optical properties were thoroughly studied such as optical absorption, and optical band gap. The basic gamma photon shielding parameters for the prepared glasses were reported between 0.015 and 15 MeV. The mass attenuation coefficient for the prepared samples increases as Yb2O3 concentration increases from 0.5 to 2.5 mol%. The highest and lowest values of the effective atomic number were found for 2.5 Yb+3 and 0.5 Yb+3 which contain the maximum and minimum concentrations of Yb2O3. The radiation shielding results suggested that 2.5 Yb+3 is the superior photons attenuator among the B2O3–SiO2–10Al2O3–ZnO–Li2O–Er2O3−Yb2O3 glasses.
•Glasses of molar composition of (40-x-y)B2O3–10SiO2–10Al2O3–30ZnO–10Li2O–xEr2O3–yYb2O3, were (x = 1.0 mol %) and (y = 0.5, 1.0, 1.5, 2.0, and 2.5) have been synthesized using the melt quenching technique.•The values of Ω2, Ω4, and Ω6, and are shown in Table 3. It has been observed that Ω2 > Ω6 > Ω4 for samples 0.5 Yb+3 and 1.0 Yb+3 while Ω6 > Ω4 > Ω2 for the samples 1.5 Yb+3, 2.0 Yb+3 and 2.5 Yb+3 respectively.•Energy level diagram of Zinc boro-aluminosilicate glasses doped with Er+3/Yb+3, have been presented to explain the optical absorption transitions of Er3+ and Yb3+ in visible and NIR region, excitation and emission transitions in the visible region.•All glasses were studied using XCOM program at several photon energies between 0.015–15 MeV.•The 2.5 YYb+3 sample has the highest values of μ/ρ relative to other prepared glasses.