Electron Stopping Powers of Chitin and Chitosan

Abstract

Chitosan can be deduced from chitin by simple chemical process. Chitosan has many applications and one of the promise application is used as nuclear shield by adopted it with some materials. Electron stopping power (SP) represents important parameter in tested the ability of any material to use it as nuclear shield. Therefore, stopping powers of electrons incident with different energies on chitin and chitosan have been calculated by using codes of National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) after modified it by built in the chemical structure and some other properties of chitin and chitosan in the codes. The results of total SP showed that chitosan has values larger than chitin but the differences are small and the maximum percentage difference ratio is 6.8% at 4 MeV electron energy. Total SP has approximately 35 Mev.cm2/g at 0.01 MeV electron energy, and decreasing with energy till to 1 MeV, then slowly increasing. In addition to total SP, the collision SP, radiative SP, density effect parameter, radiation yield, and electron range were calculated. The behaviors of the calculated parameters have been studied and explained. The obtained results suggested that chitosan may be used after mixing it with other materials as a shield from nuclear radiation, especially in low energies.