The tungsten oxide within phosphate glasses to investigate the structural, optical, and shielding properties variations

We prepared a series of sodium phosphate glasses by changing WO₃/P₂O₅ content and investigated structure optical and radiation shielding features as a function of the glass composition. The average density (\(\rho_{{{\text{exp}}}}\))was found to increase gradually from 2.49 to 3.07 g/cm³, while the average molar volume values reduced from 47.37 to 44.28 cm³/mol with WO₃ addition. Also, the average field strength was also computed and found to increase with increasing WO₃. The study of optical absorption spectra reveals that the absorption peaks in the visible region become higher compared to the peaks In the Ultraviolet region. This observation is accompanied by a color transformation of glasses from light to dark blue color, with more WO₃ adding. The existence of a pentavalent tungsten state (W⁵⁺) is identified by this blue color; with WO₃ addition an absorption band at around 350–390 nm is appeared. Moreover, this band is overlapped with the Urbach edge, which regularly produces an artificial edge-like feature at ~ 400 nm. A detailed deconvolution protocol is required for an appropriate understanding of these spectra and unraveling the hidden Urbach edge. Our analysis shows that, with increasing WO₃/P₂O₅ content, the optical band gap decreases. This behavior can be elucidated in terms of a lower band gap of WO₃ (2.7 eV) than that of P₂O₅ (8.5 eV) and the high polarizing power tungsten. Further, the radiation shielding parameters were investigated for the prepared glasses. WO₃ addition improves these shielding parameters against radiation. Besides, upon the increase of WO₃ concentration, the linear attenuation coefficient of glass material increases, which leads to decrease in have value layer values. Then it is deducible that the amount of WO₃ in this glass sample has an important impact on the shielding capability at lower energy values and has a slight impact at higher energy values.