Investigation of structural, physical and radiation attenuation properties of lithium tetra-borate with Cr₂O₃ glass-ceramics: experimental and theoretical methods

Different amounts of Cr2O3 were added to the mixture of 70Li(2)B(4)O(7) + xCr(2)O(3) +(25-x)Li2O + 4NiO + 0.75MnO(2) + 0.25Na(2)O (x = 4, 8, 12, 16, and 20 wt%) to create new glass-ceramics samples with varying densities. Structural and physical, and gamma-ray attenuation properties of the prepared samples have been investigated. To this end, the EpiXS software and EDXRF spectrometer, which is equipped with an Ultra Ge detector and a 133Ba (3 Ci) radioisotope source were employed. The relative differences between the theoretical and experimental results were in the range of 0.009 and 0.048. With XRD spectrometry, a material may be identified or its atomic-level structure could be discovered. In XRD investigations, the Cr1 structure which has the maximum quantity of Li2O and the lowest amount of Cr2O3 exhibits large crystal particle sizes. The crystal particle size of the Cr2 structure is nonetheless greater than that of the Cr1 structure. The shift in the ratio of Li2O to Cr2O3 caused a change in the size of the crystal particles inside the structure. The highest mass-attenuation coefficient (MAC) was found in the highly dense Cr5 sample compared to the other samples. A similar trend appears in the linear-attenuation coefficient (LAC). The half-value layer (HVL) arranged as follows at all energies: (HVL)(Cr1) > (HVL)(Cr2) > (HVL)(Cr3) > (HVL)(Cr4) > (HVL)(Cr5). The mean free path (MFP) showed a similar pattern of HVL. Results revealed that suggested materials can be protecting against radiation.

Journal

JOURNAL OF THE AUSTRALIAN CERAMIC SOCIETY

Year

2025

Volume

61

Issue

1

Pages

197-206

ISSN

2510-1560

eISSN

2510-1579

DOI

10.1007/s41779-024-01094-8

WoS UID

WOS:001325457200001