A study of the shielding performance of fibers coated with high-Z oxides against ionizing radiations

Abstract

The aim of the present study is to fabricate an economical, easily workable and environmentally friendly X-ray and gamma ray-shielding composites using a coating method. Nano- and micron-size powders of WO3, PbO and Bi2O3 were used as a substitution base for the shielding materials. After the synthesis of those materials, they were coated on fabric samples which were then exposed to an X-ray tube at 40, 70 and 120 kV voltages, 10 mAs, and 40 SID (i.e. the distance from the X-ray beam source to the specimen). They were also exposed to the gamma rays of a 137Cs source. Attenuation percentages (AP), mass attenuation coefficients and effective atomic numbers (Zeff) were calculated for different samples. It is evident from this study that polymer composites containing Bi2O3, WO3 and PbO can be coated on fabrics, which is an effective method to produce flexible and wearable textiles such as aprons. The results indicated that, at low energy values, the attenuation of the samples which contain nano-particles is higher than that of those containing micro-particles. Also, at the energy level of 662keV, there is no difference between the samples containing micro and nanoparticles of WO3 and Bi2O3. However, a matrix containing microparticles of PbO has a higher mass attenuation coefficient than a matrix containing nano-particles of PbO. The study was partly dedicated to the comparison of the experimental and theoretical (MCNP4C) attenuation percentages of the micro samples of Bi2O3, WO3 and PbO in exposure to ionizing radiation. As it was observed, at 40 kV, the experimental and theoretical results were almost the same for the three samples. At 70 kV and 120 kV, however, these results were significantly different in the case of the sample containing Bi2O3 micro-particles.