Synthesis and characterization of B2O3-Ag3PO4-ZnO-Na2O glasses for optical and radiation shielding applications

In this paper, a new glass system based on (55-x) B2O3-x Ag3PO4-45 ZnO-5 Na2O (x = 0.0, 5.0, 10.0 and 15.0 mol%) is synthesized via melt quenching technique and the corresponding glass specimens named as BZN-AP1, BZN-AP2, BZN-AP3, and BZN-AP4. X-ray diffraction (XRD), UV-IR are employed to evaluate the structure of the samples. The XRD analysis shows that all glass samples are amorphous in nature. UV-IR shows that the increase in Ag3PO4 concentrations results in a red shift in the region of lower photon energy and the energy band gap decreases as the concentration of Ag3PO4 increases. The neutron radiation shielding’s characteristics such as neutron coherent, incoherent and absorption cross section and transmission factor NTF of the glass sample are evaluated. The value of the neutron transmission factor NTF reduced as the thickness of the glass specimen increases. The fast and slow neutron shielding ability of the present glass system reduced as the Ag3PO4 content increased. However, the increase in Ag3PO4 content decreases the coherent, incoherent and absorption cross sections. The results presented in this work demonstrate the pivotal role of Ag3PO4 content on the synthesis, structure, optical, and neutron shielding properties of (55-x) B2O3 – x Ag3PO4 – 45 ZnO-5Na2O) glasses.