Advanced Radiation Shielding
Our novel nanostructured materials have demonstrated greater radiation attenuation than their homogeneous equivalent compositions.
Development of these advanced radiation shielding materials aim to provide lower-weight and more versatile means to protect personnel from x-rays, space electronics from charged particle radiation, and more effectively shield gamma-rays and neutrons in nuclear power generation applications.
Using nanocomposites, such as the same CdTe/ANF thin films that we use for sensing, we have reported β radiation attenuation that would be expected for a homogenous solid approximately 10 times thicker. With this, an effective charged particle shielding fabric can be fabricated, advantageous for shielding electronic components in satellites from the radiation in space while minimizing the weight of the payload.
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In order to prepare advanced radiation shielding for higher energy photons that have a much lower probability of interaction, we needed to fabricate much thicker nanostructured shielding solids. Shown below is a ~ 1cm thick solid composed completely of CdS nanoparticles.
The radiation attenuation of gamma-rays outperforms the homogeneous shielding performance by a factor of approximately 2 (the peaks above are offset for clarity). Our measurements suggest that this factor of attenuation improvement will further increase with increased thickness, and remains the focus of our ongoing research.
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In addition, we are developing these radiation shields composed of various new nanomaterials, such as SnS shown here. Polymer incorporation is being explored to improve the geometric uniformity and to achieve scalable fabrication of our advance radiation shielding materials.
