Abstract
With the growing risk of radiation exposure, there are growing interests in radiation shielding. Because most radiation shields are made from heavy metals, a need to develop a soft shield is raised to protect human body. However, because the shield can easily undergo a mechanical damage by an impact, it would be better to have self-repairing system in the shield. Here, we have fabricated an intrinsic self-healable soft shield for gamma ray by making acrylamide based hydrogel composite. The composite contains lead dioxide nanoparticles for gamma ray shielding and Laponite clays for self-repairing. Although the hydrogel contained a large amount of lead dioxide nanoparticles (3.23 M), the fabricated composites stretched beyond 1400% while showing a high attenuation coefficient of 0.1343 cm−1 against gamma ray from a cobalt-60 source. Then a systematic study was performed to analyze self-healing properties and the 96.55% of maximum self-healing efficiency was obtained. We also analyzed a storage modulus of hydrogel and molecular weight of polyacrylamide to study an effect of gamma ray on the self-healing. The self-healing efficiency was decreased by a gamma ray because the radiation induces scissioning or covalent crosslinking in the chains.
Highlights
With the growing risk of radiation exposure, there are growing interests in radiation shielding
There were no leakage of metal nanoparticles from hydrogel composites
The radiation shielding performance was effectively confirmed via gamma ray transmittance measurements
Summary
With the growing risk of radiation exposure, there are growing interests in radiation shielding. The matrix should provide excellent mechanical toughness so that it is not damaged when it contains a large amount of particles while remaining safe to wear on the skin To satisfy these requirements, rigid metal shields are becoming replaced with more versatile materials that incorporate metal nanoparticles into a polymer matrix in a h ydrogel[5]. Hydrogel-metal nanoparticle composites with sewability and a high attenuation coefficient (0.28 cm−1) were achieved by adding lead dioxide nanoparticles into hydrogel[9] In this way, the rigid metal shield can be replaced with a soft shield for use in various applications. By creating hydrogel composites with this ability, Scientific Reports | (2020) 10:21689
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