Effect of Cerium (IV) Oxide Particle Size on Polydimethylsiloxane Polymer to Form Flexible Materials against Ionizing Radiation

Abstract

This study aims to investigate the impact of CeO2 content and particle size on the radiation shielding abilities of polydimethylsiloxane, also known as silicon rubber (SR). We prepared different SR samples with 10, 30, and 50% of micro and nano CeO2 and we measured the linear attenuation coefficient (LAC) for these samples. We found that the LAC of the SR increases by increasing the CeO2 and all prepared SR samples had higher LACs than the pure SR. We examined the effect of the size of the particles on the LAC and the results demonstrated that the LAC for nano CeO2 is higher than that of micro CeO2. We investigated the half value layer (HVL) for the prepared SR samples and the results revealed that the SR with 10% micro CeO2 had a greater HVL than the SR with 10% nano CeO2. The HVL results demonstrated that the SR containing nanoparticles had higher attenuation effectiveness than the SR with micro CeO2. We also prepared SR samples containing CeO2 in both sizes (i.e., micro and nano) and we found that the HVL of the SR containing both sizes was lower than the HVL of the SR with nano CeO2. The radiation protection efficiency (RPE) at 0.059 MeV for the SR with 10% micro and nano CeO2 was 94.2 and 95.6%, respectively, while the RPE of SR containing both sizes (5% micro CeO2 + 5% micro CeO2) was 96.1% at the same energy. The RPE results also indicated that the attenuation ability was improved when utilizing the micro and nano CeO2 as opposed to the micro CeO2 or nano CeO2 at 0.662, 1.173, and 1.333 MeV.

Effect of Waste Iron Filings (IF) on Radiation Shielding Feature of Polyepoxide Composites

“…XCOM is a widely used program to theoretically calculate gamma-ray attenuation coefficients, as well as interaction mechanisms for gamma-rays with an energy range from 1 keV to 100 GeV [33,34]. Attenuator coefficients such as mean free path (MFP), half-value layer (HVL), and tenth-value layer (TVL) are utilized to evaluate the radiation attenuation properties of EP-IF composites; these equations are tabulated in Table 2 [35][36][37][38][39][40]. The radiation shielding efficiency (RSE) of EP-IF composite that is used as a radiation shield is determined by using the initial (I 0 ) and transmitted (I) gamma line intensities obtained from peak area evaluation [41].…”

Attenuation properties of hybrid nanocomposite film containing Ce2O, GO, and α-Al2O3 nanoparticles for high energy radiations

“…Investigations have shown that nanoparticles used in polymeric nanocomposites have a more attenuating effect due to better dispersion in the matrix and greater interaction with radiation 22 . The effect of nanoparticle size on the attenuation of high-energy radiation has been investigated in several articles 23 , 24 . Botelho et al showed that CuO nanoparticles embedded in the wax enhanced attenuation characteristics at low energies 25 .…”

Calculation of the Effects of Silver (Ag) Dopant on Radiation Shielding Efficiency of BiPbSrCaCuO Superconductor Ceramics Using EGS4 Code

“…These studies aim to better understand the behavior of ionizing radiation in these materials and to develop more effective radiation shielding and dosimetry systems [8,[12][13][14][15][16]. In recent years, many studies have been carried out in this field of study [17][18][19][20].…”