Abstract
In this work, boro-telluride glasses with additional zinc, aluminum, and alkali–alkaline modifiers have been synthesized using the melt-quenching–annealing method. Six glasses were fabricated with composition of [(60 −
x
)B
2
O
3
–(10 +
x
)TeO
2
–10ZnO–10Al
2
O
3
–5Li
2
O–5MgO] all in mol% and
x
varied from 0, 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50. The aim of this work is to understand the effect of changing the main glass former from B
2
O
3
→ TeO
2
, to obtain new optical materials. To confirm the amorphous nature of these six glasses, X-ray diffraction was characterized for all six glasses from 10° to 80°. Optical absorption with wavelength range 200–800 nm in room temperature was measured, and the optical absorption coefficient
α
(
λ
) calculated to obtain the cutoff wavelength. In addition, gamma photons shielding features of the prepared K1–K6 glasses were evaluated by means of some essential parameters such as mass attenuation coefficients (
µ
/
ρ
) and effective atomic number (
Z
eff
) at five energies between 0.356 and 1.33 MeV. No significant difference between the theoretical and simulation µ/ρ values was found. The effective atomic number results indiacte that as the TeO
2
content increases, the photons’ attenuation increases. The number of interactions of gamma photons with K6 sample (which contains the maximum amount of TeO
2
) is relatively high (in comparison to the rest of the samples), which results in more attenuation and thus better shielding features for K6.