Physical, structural, and shielding properties of cadmium bismuth borate-based glasses

We explore a new glassy material for radiation shielding applications. Novel transparent and non-toxic Bi2O3–B2O3 glasses including different concentrations of CdO were prepared by the conventional melt quenching method. The prepared samples were characterized and analyzed by using various analytical tools (XRD, FTIR, Raman, DSC, and UV-Vis-NIR). Ab initio molecular dynamics simulations were carried out to create structural models of the materials, and these were compared to our measurements. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to compare the vibrations obtained experimentally with the vibrational density of states obtained from an ab initio computer model for these materials. The radiation shielding properties were measured for the photon energy range (10−3–105 MeV): both mass attenuation coefficient (μ/p) and effective atomic number (Zeff) showed a gradual increase with an increase in the CdO content. The mean-free-path, tenth value layer, half-value layer, and electron density for all prepared glasses were estimated. Promising results were achieved with the new glasses for radiation shielding purposes such as nuclear reactor and medical applications. The structural, electronic, and vibrational properties of the computer models revealed a topologically disordered, but chemically ordered network, and our vibrational computations provide direct insight into several Raman peaks observed for the materials.