Abstract
With the intention of investigating the impact of Al2O3 replacement by CdO on the physical, structural, and optical properties of sodium barium phosphate glasses with chemical compositions of 20Na2O-25BaO-(15–x) Al2O3-xCdO-40P2O5 were created using the traditional melt-quenching technique with coded as Cdx depending on cadmium amount, where (x = 0, 2.5, 5, 10, 15 mol%). Shielding parameters against gamma rays were also reported for the modified glass samples. A shot-range of amorphous nature was detected by the XRD analysis. The value of the density (ρg) increased linearly with CdO content, from 3.24 to 3.87 g/cm3. On the other hand, an opposing behavior was observed for the molar volume (Vm) and crystalline volume, (Vc). FTIR spectra were carried out and confirmed the structure changing by replacing Al2O3 by CdO. Optical absorption spectra show a valuable difference at both energy gap and Urbach energy by increasing the CdO content. Radiation shielding parameters such as MAC, LAC, HVL, MFP, and Zeff, were calculated using Phy-X/PSD. We found that the CdO / Al2O3 replacement enhanced all the shielding parameters. The obtained results indicated that the increasing in CdO content modifying the structural properties and improves the shielding abilities of the studied samples. Therefore, the prepared glasses could be considered as promising as shielding materials.