Evaluation of CdS doped polyester composites regarding gamma and neutron shielding properties

Abstract

In this study, CdS doped polyester composites were produced at different weight ratios, and the impact of dopant amount on gamma and neutron shielding characteristics of a new composite material were further evaluated: the composite matrix was doped at 5%, 10%, 15% and 20% CdS weight ratios of the prepared composite. Then, the produced polyester materials have been characterized using a scanning electron microscope (SEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) patterns. Following the structure characterization, the prepared composites were tested using one gamma spectrometer system based HPGe detector with help of 22Na, 54Mn, 57Co, 60Co, 133Ba, 137Cs, 152Eu and 241Am radioactive point-isotropic sources in order to perform the evaluation in a wide energy range of gamma. The obtained results were compared to the results of Geant4 and WinXCOM simulation codes. On the last step of the presented work, the neutron removal cross sections of produced polyester composites were calculated using partial density of elements and their cross sections, and then, neutron shielding characteristics of the prepared samples were determined with help of Geant4 simulation toolkit. Both tested and simulated results of gamma shielding evaluation showed good agreement, and, for all considered photon energies, mass attenuation coefficient (μ/ρ) values of CdS (20%) were always found to be greater than the μ/ρ values of other samples (5%, 10%, 15%). The results for neutron shielding showed that neutron transmission was decreasing with the increase of CdS in the material. In short, having higher μ/ρ values and lower neutron transmission shows that increasing the amount of CdS in the sample causes the higher radiation shielding property for both gamma and neutron.