Radiation shielding and structural features for different perovskites doped YBa₂Cu₃O_y composites

The increased demand for ionizing radiation in various fields led to the search for new shielding substances. In this study, five samples of perovskite oxides (BaTiO₃, SrTiO₃, BaTiO₃–SrTiO₃, and PbZr_0.2Ti_0.8O₃) doped YBa₂Cu₃O_y ceramics were prepared to explore their structure and ability for exploitation in the radiation shielding field. The structural properties were explored by using the XRD technique. The XRD results showed an orthorhombic structure for all prepared ceramics. The crystallite size reduces gradually from 96.19 to 66.63 nm with adding different perovskite oxides into the composites. The density shows a variation from about 5.89 to 6.23 g/cm³. The mass attenuation coefficient (MAC) was defined experimentally (MAC)_exp and theoretically (MAC)_the to check its validity. The maximum relative difference between (MAC)_exp and (MAC)_the is 7.83%. YBa₂Cu₃O₇/(PbZr_0.2Ti_0.8O₃)_2% and YBa₂Cu₃O₇/(BaTiO₃–SrTiO₃)_2% samples showed superior gamma shielding properties and mass stopping power (MSP) for charged particles, respectively, while the pristine YBa₂Cu₃O₇ sample has a better fast neutron removal cross-section (Σ_R). From the obtained results, it can be seen a slight variation in shielding properties, indicating the ability to use the different ceramic samples as radiation shielding materials.