Grafting red clay with Bi2O3 nanoparticles into epoxy resin for gamma-ray shielding applications

Abstract

We developed new composites for photons shielding applications. The composite were prepared with epoxy resin, red clay and bismuth oxide nanoparticles (Bi2O3 NPs). In order to establish which ratio of red clay to Bi2O3 NPs provides the best shielding capabilities, several different ratios of red clay to Bi2O3 NPs were tested. The transmission factor (TF) was calculated for two different thicknesses of each sample. From the TF data, we found that epoxy resin materials have a high attenuation capacity at low energy. For ERB-10 sample (40%Epoxy + 50% Red clay + 10% Bi2O3 NPs), the TF values are 52.3% and 14.3% for thicknesses of 0.5 and 1.5 cm (at 0.06 MeV). The composite which contains the maximum amount of Bi2O3 nanoparticles (40%Epoxy + 50% Red clay + 10% Bi2O3 NPs, coded as ERB-30) has lower TF than the other composites. The TF data demonstrated that ERB-30 is capable of producing more effective attenuation from gamma rays. We also determined the linear attenuation coefficient (LAC) for the prepared composites and we found that the LAC increases for a given energy in proportion to the Bi2O3 NPs ratio. For the ERB-0 (free Bi2O3 NPs), the LAC at 0.662 MeV is 0.143 cm−1, and it increases to 0.805 cm−1 when 10% of Bi2O3 NPs is added to the epoxy resin composite. The half value layer (HVL) results showed that the thickness necessary to shield that photons to its half intensity can be significantly lowered by increasing the weight fraction of the Bi2O3 NPs in the epoxy resin composite from 0 to 30%. The HVL for ERB-20 and ERB-30 were compared with other materials such as (Epoxy as a matrix material and Al2O3, Fe2O3, MgO and ZrO2 as filler oxides in the matrix at 0.662 MeV. The HVL values for ERB-20 and ERB-30 are 4.385 and 3.988 cm and this is lower than all the selected epoxy polymers.

Multilayer radiation shielding system with advanced composites containing heavy metal oxide nanoparticles: a free-lead solution

“…We observed that the LAC of our samples had a maximum value at 0.015 MeV, followed by a sharp decline as the energy increased. The high LAC values at low energy suggested that these composites have good attenuation properties at low energy region 36 . This tendency, which is explained by the increased chance of photoelectric absorption at lower energies and a subsequent drop in this likelihood at higher energies, was consistent with other findings.…”

Functional Bi2O3/Gd2O3 Silica-Coated Structures for Improvement of Early Age and Radiation Shielding Performance of Cement Pastes

“…In recent years, there has been a visible interest in the introduction of nanosized admixtures into cement-based composites, as their performance is superior to their micro-sized counterparts [8][9][10]21]. It was already confirmed in other radiation shielding materials such as polymers [28,29], glass [30,31] and clays [32][33][34], that nanosized admixtures exhibit superior attenuating properties than their micro-sized counterparts. Primary factors attributable to this behavior are (1) surface-to-volume ratio and (2) quantum confinement effects [35].…”