Study of environment friendly bismuth incorporated lithium borate glass system for structural, gamma-ray and fast neutron shielding properties.

The present work is aimed at incorporating the heavy metal oxide 'bismuth oxide' in lithium-borate glass system and studying its effect on the glass structure, durability, gamma-ray and neutron shielding ability. The density, XRD, Raman, FTIR, and UV-Visible spectroscopic techniques assisted in understanding the structure of ternary bismuth‑lithium-borate glass system. It has been found that the glass samples are of amorphous nature and structure is mainly built up of BO4, BO3, BiO6, BiO3 units and non-bridging oxygens (NBOs). Bismuth-incorporated glasses possess improved water resistance ability. The gamma-ray shielding ability was evaluated from mass attenuation coefficient, mean free path, tenth value layer and effective atomic number and it was found to be improved with the addition of bismuth oxide content. The exposure build up factor was also computed to account for the secondary photons and multiple Compton scattering. The removal cross section for fast neutrons (∑R) was also evaluated to study the neutron shielding ability of our prepared glasses. The glasses were also compared with barite concrete and commercial shielding glass RS 360 for gamma-rays and, with H2O, graphite, ordinary and hematite-serpentine concrete for checking neutrons shielding ability. It was observed that our glasses have better radiation shielding properties than the compared materials. In the light of these obtained results, it was concluded that the prepared bismuth‑lithium-borate glass system can be utilised for radiation shielding applications.