Effects of particle size and weight percentage of heavy metal elements on photon shielding efficiency of reinforced polymer composites

Abstract

Effects of particle size and weight percentage of heavy metal elements on photon shielding efficiency of reinforced polymer composites INTRODUCTION Many researches worldwide have been conducted to find new materials and compounds as alternatives to traditional shielding materials. These researchers have developed polymer micro/nano composites using non lead metals for radiation shielding applications. Polymer composites when reinforced with heavy metal in form of micro/nano particles provides many advantages including cost-effectiveness, light weight factor, flexibility, non-toxicity, conformability, etc. over conventional materials. Many researchers have studied the effects of the type, weight percentages and particle size of radiation absorbing materials on the radiation shielding properties for X-ray, gamma and neutron attenuation (1-5). Botelho et al. (2011) compared the micron and nano size of CuO on the X-ray absorption