Evaluation of the effect of low additive V₂O₅/ZnO on the structural, physical, and radiation attenuation performance of borate glasses

In this work, new glass systems with composition xV₂O₅–20CuO–60B₂O₃–15CaO–(5−x)ZnO which is coded as BCuCa–(5−x)Zn:xV where (0, 1, 2.5 mol.%) were fabricated using the melt-quenching technique with melting temperature 1200 °C to serve as competitive candidates for γ-ray and neutron shielding. XRD and FT-IR were used to characterize the assembled glass samples. The density values of synthesized glasses were increased almost linearly from 2.807 to 2.834 g cm⁻³, whereas molar volume decreased from 54.894 to 54.174 cm³ mol⁻¹, depending on the addition of V₂O₅. The γ-ray shielding properties of the prepared glass samples were tested experimentally using P-type HPGe detector in the photon energy range of 0.356–1.332 MeV and theoretically with the help of Monte Carlo (MC) simulations and Phy-X/PSD software in the photon energy range of 0.015–15 MeV. Various nuclear radiation shielding parameters such as linear attenuation coefficient (µ), half value layer (HVL), tenth value layer (TVL), mean free path (MFP), effective atomic number (Z_eff), radiation protection efficiency (RPE), and fast neutron removal cross-section (FNRCS) for the prepared glasses have been evaluated at the selected range of photon energies. The experimental data of μ for all the tested glass systems is comparable to that obtained from a theoretical calculation. Also, Monte Carlo calculations were in a fairly good agreement with the Phy-X/PSD data, so that the maximum difference between them was about 2.716%. The outlined results indicated that the glass sample with 2.5-mol % V₂O₅ (BCuCa–2.5Zn:2.5V) exhibits optimal µ, Z_eff, HVL, TVL, and MFP values. BCuCa–2.5Zn:2.5V was also found to have the best value of the FNRCS (about 0.1 cm⁻¹).