Radiation Shielding Capabilities of Glasses with Potential Applications in Spacecraft and Laboratories

Radiation shielding glass is a good candidate to be used in the future manned spacecraft missions, as well as in radiation intensive laboratory environments. This study investigates radiation shielding properties of a number of semiconducting glass compositions produced at Coe College. To test radiation shielding abilities, Geant4 simulations were created where protons, electrons, and neutrons, with energies ranging between 1 keV and 100 GeV, were fired into semiconducting photovoltaic amorphous materials. The data were converted into stopping power, which correlates with the shielding capabilities of these glasses. In this system of analysis 0.4TeO2-0.6V2O glass provides greater than a 13% increase in stopping power when compared to other glasses tested at 8.4 eV cm2/g. The post-shielding distributions, which show considerable variations, are also provided. Comparison with aluminum and water suggests that some of these glasses are good candidates for missions requiring radiation shielding. Of particular interest is the applicability of these materials to manned missions to Mars in order to shield astronauts from dangerous solar winds and galactic cosmic rays.