Abstract
This work aims to investigate the structure and the radiation shielding efficiency of various types of superconducting ceramics of REBCO (RE: La, Sm, Gd, Eu, Er, Nd, and Dy). The different samples were made via the conventional solid-state reaction route (SSR). The structural analysis via the XRD technique showed that all ceramics crystallized in an orthorhombic structure, except for LaBCO ceramic, which has a tetragonal crystalline structure. The lattice parameters showed a variation with a relative change in the ionic radius of RE elements. The crystallite sizes D were calculated using the Scherrer equation. The highest value was obtained in ErBCO (87.19 nm) and DyBCO (92.02 nm) ceramics. Also, the density of different ceramics shows a variance with the respect to ionic radii and atomic numbers of RE elements, and the highest values were obtained for ErBCO and DyBCO ceramics. The radiation shielding analysis was performed by Monte Carlo simulation. Different important shielding parameters were calculated. The results showed all these ceramics have high attenuation strength at low energy, and this competence to shield the radiation is dropped with increasing the energy. The LAC for all ceramics is (in order of 0.85–1.14 cm−1 at 0.244 MeV, and in order of 0.356 and 0.444 cm−1 at 0.511 MeV. Dy-123 and Er-123 have the highest LAC values, while La-123 has the least. The half-value layer (Δ0.5) results proved that ceramics samples made with comparatively high density showed an outstandingly better performance in attenuating the radiation compared to the low-density ceramics. Also, the Δ0.5 results showed that the utilization of Dy and Er has a notable effect in reducing the thickness of the ceramic since the least Δ0.5 is found for Dy-123 followed by Er-123. These results could be original references for future studies aimed at developing new and innovative ceramics exploited as radiation-protective materials.
•Synthesis of (RE)BCO (RE = La, Gd, Sm, Eu, Nd, Er, Dy) ceramics via solid state reaction.•The unit cell volume showed variation with a relative change in ionic radius of RE elements.•γ-ray attenuation ability of (RE)BCO ceramics was assessed via Monte Carlo simulation.•The least Δ0.5 is found for DyBCO followed by ErBCO.•DyBCO possesses the highest radiation protection efficiency (RPE).