Characterization of radiation interaction properties of borate glasses doped with silver nanoparticles

J. ELIAS; M. VALLEJO; I. SCARINCI; M. VALENTE

Zacatecas

Congreso; ISSSD 2021 - Int. Symposium of Solid State Dosimetry; 2021

Univ. Zacatecas & Soc. Mex de Dosim.

Glass matrices infused with nanoparticles have been proposed as suitable materials for many technological applications, like optical fibers, light emission, and potential radiation applications. Borate glasses as developed by Vallejo et al. [Vallejo, 2020] have been exhaustively characterized in terms of morphology and size distributions as well as mechanical and optical properties. Five novel borate glass formulations, activated with rare earths and doped with silver nanoparticles, have been synthetized and preliminarily characterized by means of different analytic techniques, like electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, among others. However, potential implementations of borate glasses in radiation applications are strongly dependent upon the radiological properties as well as the corresponding performance upon irradiation. In this regard, this work reports on the characterization of the most relevant radiological properties of five novel borate glass formulations by means of Monte Carlo approaches implemented by adapting Monte Carlo subroutines based on two independent Monte Carlo main codes, namely PENELOPE [Salvat, 2018] and FLUKA [Battistoni, 2016]. Many relevant radiological properties have been assessed, including mass density, effective atomic number, mean excitation energy, mass attenuation coefficient, electron range, electron stopping power and mean free path. Moreover, the performance of the different borate glasses for X-ray irradiations has been evaluated by means of the corresponding in-depth spectral degradation. Effects due to the corresponding concentration of silver nanoparticles have been studied, whereas comparisons among the Monte Carlo codes provide excellent agreements.[1] M. A. Vallejo, J. A. Elias, M. Honorato, P. V. Ceron, C. Gomez-Solis, C. Wiechers, R. Navarro, M. Sosa. Silver Nanoparticles Enhance Thermoluminescence and Photoluminescence Response in Li2B4O7 Glass Doped with Dy3+ and Yb3+. J. Fluoresc. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10895-019-02479-w, 2020.[2] F. Salvat et al. PENELOPE-2018: A Code System for Monte Carlo Simulation of Electron and Photon Transport, OECD-NEA, 2018.[3] Battistoni, G. et. al., Front. Oncol. 6 https://doi.org/10.3389/fonc.2016.00116, 2016.