The signifcant role of WO3 on high‑dense BaO–P2O3 glasses: transmission factors and a comparative investigation using commercial and other types of shields

Abstract

Abstract The direct effects of tungsten trioxide (WO3) on gamma radiation attenuation properties of tungsten/barium/phosphate glasses with chemical form xWO3–(50-x/2)BaO–(50-x/2)P2O3, x = 0 (S1)–60 (S7) in steps of 10 mol% has been investigated. To this end, Phy-X/PSD software and Monte Carlo code were applied. The increased amount of WO3 in the glass composition, on the other hand, contributed positively to the increase in density and radiation sensing properties. At the lowest and highest WO3 contributions, a nearly twofold increase in HVL value was seen for the S1 and S7 glass samples, respectively, with S7 having the lowest HVL values. The HVL has obeyed the trend as: (HVL)S1 > (HVL)S2 > (HVL)S3 > (HVL)S4 > (HVL)S5 > (HVL)S6 > (HVL)S7. The variation of the tenth value layer (TVL) for all studied glasses has the same trend of HVL. In terms of mean free path (MFP), there was negative effect of WO3 concentration on the trend of MFP. Consequently, S7 glass sample has the lowest values of MFP, while the S1 glass sample has the highest values. Therefore, (MFP)S1 > (MFP)S2 > (MFP)S3 > (MFP)S4 > (MFP)S5 > (MFP)S6 > (MFP)S7. A comparison of the HVL of S7 glass sample with some commercial radiation shielding materials such as different types of concrete and RS-253-G18 glasses has been performed and concluded that the S7 glass sample is superior as radiation shielding material than several commercial materials. It can be concluded that WO3 reinforcement serves a multipurpose of increasing the density and hence the gamma-ray-shielding characteristics of comparable glass compositions.