Impact of replacement of B₂O₃ by TeO₂ on the physical, optical and gamma ray shielding characteristics of Pb-free B₂O₃-TeO₂-ZnO-Al₂O₃-Li₂O-MgO glass system

A study has been conducted to determine the effect of replacing B₂O₃ with TeO₂ on the physical and optical properties of a Pb-free B₂O₃-TeO₂-ZnO-Al₂O₃-Li₂O-MgO glass system, as well as the system's gamma-ray shielding capabilities. The optical basicity of the manufactured glass samples is increased from 0.577 to 0.862, which is a significant improvement. As the quantity of oxygen atoms in the produced glass samples diminishes, the oxygen packing density varies between 102.978 and 78.351, depending on the sample size. The energy of the optical band gap ranges between 3.878 eV and 2.21 eV. The refractive index, dielectric constant, and optical dielectric constant all rise as the amount of TeO₂ in the material increases. The values of molar refractivity (R_m) and electronic polarizability (α_m) have been shown to decrease as the amount of TeO₂ in the sample has increased. The radiation protection efficiency RPE (%) for the glasses was reported at 0.356 MeV. We compared the RPE (%) for the glasses with lowest and highest TeO₂ content and we found that the RPE values for the Te10 and Te60 glasses are 8% and 13% respectively (this is for a thickness of 0.25 cm). Also, we found that the RPE of the Te10 glass becomes 35% and that of the Te60 glass is 51% when the thickness of both the glasses is increased to 1.25 cm. The effective atomic number (Z_eff) for the glasses was reported at 0.356 MeV. The Z_eff of the glass system showed an upward trend with TeO₂ concentration.