Gamma irradiation effects on photoluminescence and semiconducting properties of non-conventional heavy metal binary PbO-BiO glasses.

Non-conventional heavy metal oxide glasses have attracted great interest owing to their unique optical properties and their radiation shielding behavior. Non-conventional glasses of main chemical composition (100 - x) PbO-xBiO where x = 35, 30, 25, 20, 15, 10, and 5 were prepared through the conventional melting and annealing approach. X-ray diffraction measurements denoted the amorphous nature of the prepared glasses. The optical absorption in the UV-visible range recorded strong UV-near visible absorption spectra that correlated to trivalent Bi ions. The optical band gap E, Urbach energy ∆E, and the refractive index were identified for the prepared glasses employing the cognizant theories. The variations in the optical parameters have been associated with the increasing BiO and the doses of γ- irradiation. The photoluminescent properties of the prepared non-conventional binary BiO-PbO glasses were recorded in the visible range after UV excitation and the color coordinates are located and distributed in the hue violet degree. FT-IR spectroscopic measurements before and after gamma irradiation were applied to investigate the structural changes in the binary heavy metal PbO-BiO glasses. FTIR data specified that the glass network is composed of different structural building units from BiO/BiO and PbO/PbO depending on the addition ratio between PbO and BiO.