Synthesis, optical, mechanical characteristics, and gamma-ray shielding capacity of polyethylene -basalt mixture

Abstract

In this work, a new polymeric composite consisting of polyethylene polymers as a base material filled with different weight percentages of basalt rock was prepared. The basalt ratio was added to the base material with percentages of 1.0 up to 20.0 wt%. The crystal structure, optical, mechanical properties, and gamma-ray shielding capacity of the undoped and the doped polymeric samples which were coded as HDPE-Bx, where x = 0.0, 1.0, 3.0, 5.0, 10.0, and 20.0 wt% were investigated. The optical energy band gap (EOptical) of the prepared mixture was decreased by increasing the basalt concentration in the mixture from 4 to 2.6 eV for the allowed direct transition and from 5.5 to 4.7 eV for the allowed indirect transition. The mechanical properties of the HDPE polymers were enhanced with the enhancement of Basalt (powder) added to the host polymers with ratios ranging from 0.0 to 20.0 wt%. Radiation shielding capacity of the prepared samples was investigated in the 0.015–15 MeV photon energy via Phy-X software and MCNP-5 simulation code. Results revealed that the mass attenuation coefficient (μm) of the prepared samples increased with increasing the basalt ratio from 1.0 to 20 wt%. Besides, the half-value layer (HVL) decreased. The μm ranged from 0.7455 to 2.956 cm2/g for HDPE-B0 to HDPE-B20 at 0.015 MeV photon energy, while at 15 MeV, the result refers to an increase in the μm from 0.0181 to 0.0189 cm2/g for HDPE-B0 to HDPE-B20. The HVL of the prepared samples was arranged in the order that HDPE-B0 > HDPE-B1 > HDPE-B3 > HDPE-B5 > HDPE-B10 > HDPE-B20. This order assured that HDPE-B20 is better in shielding applications than the other prepared samples.