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Description
Tellurite-based glasses are promising candidates for ionizing radiation shielding due to their high density, good transparency, and compositional flexibility. In this work, a series of TeO₂–B₂O₃–PbO–M glasses (where M = SrO, BaO, MgO, and CaO) were successfully fabricated using the conventional melt-quenching technique, and the influence of the modifier oxide (M) on the gamma-ray shielding performance was systematically investigated using Phy-X software over a wide photon energy range of 0.015–15 MeV. The prepared glasses exhibited noticeable variations in density depending on the type of alkaline earth oxide incorporated, where the glass containing BaO showed the highest density while the MgO-containing glass presented the lowest density. The linear attenuation coefficient (LAC) demonstrated strong energy dependence, decreasing with increasing photon energy due to the transition from photoelectric absorption to Compton scattering and pair production mechanisms. Among the investigated compositions, the BaO-containing glass exhibited the highest LAC and effective atomic number (Zeff), whereas the MgO-containing glass showed the lowest values. The half-value layer (HVL) results revealed a pronounced difference between MgO- and BaO-based glasses, reflecting the strong influence of density and atomic composition on attenuation capability. The HVL values were compared with previously reported shielding glasses, demonstrating competitive performance, particularly for the BaO-containing system, and confirming that the type of alkaline earth oxide plays a crucial role in tailoring the radiation shielding efficiency of tellurite-based glasses.