Effect of replacing ZnO with La₂O₃ on the physical, optical, and radiation shielding properties of lanthanum zinc tellurite

Abstract The optical and radiation attenuation properties of zinc-tellurite glass modified with La 2 O 3 are investigated in this work. The density increased from 3.13 to 4.73 g cm −3 as the concentrations of La 2 O 3 rises, indicating a significant physical property. A shift in absorption to lower energy levels is indicated by the Urbach energy ( E u ) rising from 0.307 to 0.335 and the optical band gap narrowing from 3.36 to 1.36 eV for ( <m:math xmlns:m="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" overflow="scroll"> <m:mrow> <m:msubsup> <m:mi>E</m:mi> <m:mtext>opt</m:mtext> <m:mtext>indi</m:mtext> </m:msubsup> </m:mrow> </m:math> ${E}_{\text{opt}}^{\text{indi}}$ ), and from 4.06 to 1.5 eV for ( <m:math xmlns:m="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" overflow="scroll"> <m:mrow> <m:msubsup> <m:mi>E</m:mi> <m:mtext>opt</m:mtext> <m:mtext>di</m:mtext> </m:msubsup> </m:mrow> </m:math> ${E}_{\text{opt}}^{\text{di}}$ ). This study concludes that the zinc tellurite glasses doped with La 2 O 3 showed improved optical characteristics for optical semiconducting devices. LAC (cm −1 ) increases from 0.115 to 0.183 at 15 MeV and from 140.97 to 223.49 cm −1 at 0.015 MeV as the La 2 O 3 content increases, indicating a significant improvement in radiation shielding effectiveness. The high (LAC) values indicate enhanced photon absorption, making this glass a strong candidate for radiation shielding in medical applications. Overall, this study indicated that La 2 O 3 could offer better shielding properties to the glass samples.