Determination of radiation shielding properties of low-density polyethylene reinforced with bismuth against gamma-rays

Abstract

Radiation hazard has inevitably become a global threat due to the widespread use of radiation technology in industrial manufacturing and medicine. As in medicine, the workers are in danger of being exposed to high-penetrating gamma-rays during the treatment of cancerous tumours. Hence, developing such an excellent shielding material from the polymer is vital since it can be used broadly, is low cost, and is non-poisonous to nature. This study aimed to observe the effect of additive content such as bismuth on shielding performance. To test the hypothesis that high-density material leads to higher radiation shielding performance, fabricated bismuth-low-density polyethylene (LDPE) composites that have been processed via internal melt-mixing and compression-moulding processes were labelled with LDPE-100, Bi-5, and Bi-10 containing 0, 5, and 10 wt.% of bismuth content with a thickness of 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, and 0.4 cm respectively. Throughout the experiment, a photon from a gamma source of 241Am and 133Ba with an energy range of 59 keV and 356 keV were captured by a solid-state detector to calculate the count rate in count per second (cps). The fundamental shielding parameter such as mass attenuation coefficient, half-value thickness, tenth-value thickness, and mean free path was also computed using Phy-X software to evaluate the radiation shielding effectiveness. The results showed that Bi-10 polymer composites with 10% wt. of bismuth filler had MAC, HVL, TVL, and MFP values of 1.159 cm2/g, 0.554 cm, 1.838 cm, and 0.798 cm, respectively, and may be used as an effective shielding material for gamma radiation with an energy of 59 keV compared to 356 keV.