The Effective Atomic Number For Gamma Ray Interactions With Heavy Metal Oxide Glasses

The interaction of high energy photons with matter is important in nuclear engineering and radiation medicine and biology. Glass has the double task of being transparent to visible light while absorbing radiation such as gamma rays and neutrons, thus protecting the experimenter or observer. Glass has also been suggested for the containment of radioactive waste products. Heavy metal oxide glasses have particularly good gamma shielding properties. In this work, the authors have calculated the effective atomic number and related parameters at photon energies from 1 keV to 100 GeV for the CaO-SrO-B2O3, CdO-PbO-B2O3, and ZnO-PbO-B2O3 glass systems.