Experimental radiation shielding investigation of the holmium oxide effects on GTB glass system

This research proposes the fabrication of novel radiation shielding glasses with a cost-effective solution by using a melt quenching technique. To this end, the formulated glasses possess the overall composition of (35-x) based (B₂O₃), (20-TeO₂), (10-GeO₂), (35-MgO) and (xHo₂O₃), in which we selected different values of x as 1.25, 2.5, and 3.75 mol%. The gamma-radiation shielding properties of these glasses were investigated and experimentally assessed by utilizing ¹³⁷Cs-137 and ⁶⁰Co-60 sources alongside with an NaI(Tl) (2″ × 2″) detector. The results demonstrate that the inclusion of Ho₂O₃ has the ability to positively influence the density of the glasses as desired. Furthermore, the inclusion of Ho₂O₃ can significantly improve the attenuation efficacy of the produced glasses. The values of the radiation protection efficiency (G_RPE) for the three examined glasses achieve a maximum efficiency for low energies with 0.662 MeV, exhibiting a significant decline across all samples considered as the energy rises to 1.332 MeV.