Nonlinear optical, optical limiting and radiation shielding features of Eu³⁺ activated borate glasses

Effect of trivalent europium ions on optical nonlinear and limitng features of antimony sodium borate gasses was studied at 532 nm using Z-scan method with pumping under nanosecond laser pulses. The Z–scan profile of studied glasses in open aperture configuration showed two photon absorption which is because of reverse saturable absorption. As the Eu₂O₃ concentration is elevated in the composition, the two–photon absorption coefficients were increased while the opposite trend has been noticed in optical limiting threshold values. This endorse, the high Eu³⁺ doped antimony sodium borate glasses are potential materials for fabricating the optical limiters to work in visible region for the safeguard of delicated instruments and also human eyes from high energy laser radaitions persuaded damages. Further, the linear attenuation coefficient (LAC) revealed the incorporation of Eu₂O₃ enhances the LAC and thus an improvement on the shielding competence of the fabricated glasses occurs with the addition of Eu₂O_3. The effective atomic number (Z_eff) results showed that the maximum interactions between the photons and the atoms of the glasses occurs at 0.122 MeV and the glass samples have a good blocking ability to the photons. The half value layer (HVL) found that to reduces as the Eu³⁺ content elevated to higher level in the composition. The radiation shielding factors showed that SNBEu2 glass with the 2 mol % of Eu₂O₃ is the superior shield out of the fabricated SNBEux samples.