Experimental investigation on radiation shielding characteristics of MgO–GeO ₂ –TeO ₂ –B ₂ O ₃ –M, (M = Gd ₂ O ₃ /Yb ₂ O ₃ /Tm ₂ O ₃ ) glass system

This paper conducts an experimental investigation and synthesise of three rare earth oxides doped glass compositions incorporation gadolinium oxide (Gd 2 O 3 ), thulium oxide (Tm 2 O 3 ), and ytterbium oxide (Yb 2 O 3 ). This experimental investigation is carried out using the narrow beam geometry to examine the performance of rare earth oxides doped glass for photon shielding. To this end, the radiation shielding performance is obtained theoretically using linear attenuation coefficient ( μ ) as an indicator. The measured μ is then benchmarked against theoretical data obtained from Phy-X software. The results show excellent agreement between the theoretical data and the data obtained from the Phy-X software with Δ% < 0.5 %. In particular, the results show that the indicator μ value decreases from ∼0.29 cm −1 at 0.662 MeV to ∼0.20 cm −1 at 1.332 MeV in all samples, which indicates that the radiation is absorbed more effectively, and thus, the prepared glass achieves excellent protection. Based on the measured μ , several key shielding parameters were evaluated and analyzed such as effective atomic number ( Z eff ), half-value layer ( λ 1/2 ), mean-free path ( λ ), transmission factor (TF), and radiation protection efficiency (RPE). The results demonstrate that the prepared glass samples exhibit competitive attenuation performance compared with the state-of-the-art glass types prepared in the literature. This outcome introduces the proposed samples as suitable candidates for lightweight shielding applications.