Combined experimental and Geant4 Monte Carlo study of radiation shielding investigation of TeO2-B2O3-ZnO-BaO-Bi2O3-PbO transparent glass-ceramic composition

A group of glass-ceramic samples synthesized with chemical formula of 20TeO 2 -25B 2 O 3 -10ZnO-(20-x)BaO-25Bi 2 O 3 -xPbO, where x=2.5, 5, 7.5, 10, all in mol%. The photon shielding ability of the prepared glasses is experimentally studied at 0.662, 1.173 and 1.332 MeV using narrow-beam transmission geometry and the experimental results are validated using Monte Carlo simulation (Geant4 MC toolkit). It is found that replacing BaO with PbO systematically increases the linear attenuation coefficient ( μ ) from 0.5050 cm -1 to 0.5998 cm -1 at 0.662 MeV. In contrast, the Pb10 sample showed a near-ideal experimental buildup factor ( B E x p ≈ 0.98 ), indicating minimal scattering interference, and its effective atomic number ( Z e f f ) peaked at 31.29. The Pb10 sample offers a 45% radiation protection efficiency (RPE) at 0.662 MeV, according to the obtained results, making these glasses high-performance, portable substitutes for conventional shielding materials. Figure 1: A diagram of the narrow-beam gamma-ray transmission setup used to measure radiation shielding.