Ge-Se-Sb-Ag chalcogenide glasses for nuclear radiation shielding applications

This paper aims to study gamma and beta attenuation characteristics of newly developed 60Se- 20Ge (20 – x)-Sb-xAg (where x varies from 0 to 20 mol% with step of 5) Chalcogenide glasses. Geant4 toolkit was utilized mainly to explore gamma-ray attenuation properties by determining linear attenuation coefficient (μ) for the chosen samples. The obtained results were compared with the theoretical approach applying via XCOM program. Then, we utilized the μ values to compute effective atomic number (Zeff) and half value layer (HVL). For the sample coded as SGSA1, the μ values are 0.191 and 0.180 cm−1 between 3 and 4 MeV, while they are 0.175 and 0.197 cm−1 between 6 and 15 MeV respectively. The HVL varied between 0.001492 and 0.001317 cm at 0.015 MeV and 0.021955–0.021439 cm at 0.05 MeV. ESTAR program was employed to investigate beta attenuation properties by estimation CSDA range and TSP factors of the incident electron. It was noted that there is a significant influence of silver on the radiation shielding characteristics of the tested materials. Moreover, we compared the studied glasses with commercial glasses and traditional concrete in term of MFP. The results showed the possibility of use the studied materials for the radiation shielding applications.