Abstract
Lead borate glasses containing increasing amount of cerium oxide are subjected to high doses of ionizing radiation. In order to obtain information about the effect of irradiation on such a glass matrix, FTIR and SEM spectroscopic studies were measured before and after the exposure. The experimental results indicated that, the impact of radiation on the glass network was greatly dependent on to the amount of CeO2 replaced by PbO. It was observed that irradiation induced a permanent variation in the structural properties appeared through the change in the intensity of both boron triangular and tetrahedral absorption spectra. The addition of cerium atoms (less than 15 mol %) into borate glasses has been shown a slightly affect by gamma irradiation indicating the stability of network forming units. The abundance amount of PbO showed superior shielding behavior toward the effect of successive gamma. While at higher CeO2 content, the samples show obvious changes in their absorption bands attributed to both triangular and tetrahedral borate units. Moreover, SEM was also carried out and revealed a significant dependent composition and observed new structural features under irradiation.