A comparative study on the nuclear shielding properties of BiBr3 and PbSO4 incorporated composites

Abstract Detailed investigations on the photon and neutron attenuation properties of various BiBr3 and PbSO4 incorporated polyester composites have been carried out in terms of evaluating their potential use as new radiation shielding materials. Utilizing HPGe detector-based γ-ray spectrometry, the mass attenuation coefficient values of the polyester materials were calculated over a wide photon energy range of 59.5–1408 keV. The experimental results have been compared to those obtained using XCOM software and showed that the measured attenuation coefficient was in good agreement with the theoretical results at all photon energies studied. Moreover, BiBr3(20%) and PbSO4(20%) exhibit the minimum half value layers (5.94 and 6.58 cm at 661 keV) and highest radiation protection efficiencies (69.80 and 69.67% at 59.9 keV), while the neutron removal cross-sections of BiBr3(5%) and PbSO4(5%) samples were higher than the other composites studied.