Investigation of structural, optical characteristics of Gd3+ doped phosphate glass for radiation shielding applications

[Display omitted] •The Gadolinium doped phosphate glass was produced using conventional melt quenching technique.•The Gadolinium doped Phosphate glass emits summer sunlight (blue sky) and its color coordinates are very close to white light.•The mass attenuation coefficient of the prepared glass was found to be 4592 cm2/g at 0.001 MeV.•The mean free path value of gadolinium doped phosphate glass was measured to be 11.85 cm at 15 MeV.•The produced glass’s high Zeff value confirms its ability to function as a shielding material, according to the Phy-X study. Gadolinium doped phosphate glass was created with a composition of 70 P2O5 + 5Al2O3 + 5 Ba2CO3 + 9 KF2 + 5 MnO2 + 5 SnO+1 Gd2O3 by using the melt-quenching process. The prepared glass sample’s amorphous nature was confirmed by the X-ray diffraction analysis. FT-IR examination confirms the presence of phosphate functional groups. Glass’s optical band gap was found to be 3.5 eV using Tauc’s plot method. The photoluminescence analysis indicates that the emission band at around 311 nm. The Commission International de I’Eclairage (CIE) was employed. It was identified that the computed chromaticity coordinate values (x = 0.3164 and y = 0.3371) were situated in the summer sunlight zone, close to the white light region. The attenuation capabilities of the gadolinium-doped phosphate glass sample were validated by the gamma ray shielding parameters. The mass attenuation coefficient and Mean free path of the prepared glass were fund to be 4.41 × 105 cm2/g at 0.015 MeV and 12.4 cm at 15 MeV respectively. In terms of infiltration deepness up to 40 MFP, the energy-related energy buildup factor (EBF) and energy absorption buildup factor (EABF) of glasses were calculated using the five (a, b, c, d, and Xk) parameters of the G-P fitting scheme. All of the results show that the synthetic glass can be used as shielding materials against gamma radiation.