Study on Lead Iodide-Polyvinyl Alcohol Polymer Composites as an X-ray Shielding Material

Abstract

Now-a-days, the importance of x-rays is increasing in fields like medical diagnosis, cancer treatment, nuclear fission energy, x-ray scanning machines for airport and railway station entry and in treatment of food for preservation. But the exposure to x-rays will be harmful for the users of such facilities. Doctors, operators and researchers are required to be protected from the high energy ionizing radiations like x-rays and gamma rays.So to protect them, proper shielding is necessary. Numbers of shielding materials are used at workplaces of high radiation regions at nuclear installations.  Most commonly used, shielding material is lead glasses due to its high atomic number (Z=82). This insures high absorption by the shielding material. Recently light polymer sheets of polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) are replacing heavy glass sheets. To prepare lead polymer sheets lead compounds are mixed with polymer. In the present work, we selected to mix lead iodide in polymer composite to analyze its X-ray shielding capability. Polymer composites sheets of lead iodide with PVA were prepared by solution method. These sheets of Polymer composites were subjected to soft x-rays (30 KeV- 60KeV) switching studies at room temperature. These sheets found to provide the x-ray absorption69.6% higher than conventional shielding material like lead and are light in weight too.