Radiation Physics and Chemistry 177 (2020) 109145

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Radiation Physics and Chemistry

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/radphyschem

Investigating the effect of adding CdO nano particles on neutron shielding

efficacy of HDPE
Umm-e-Kulsooma, Shakaib Arslan Gursalb, Muhammad Shahbaz Khurshida,
Malik Saif-ur-Rehmana, Awais Shahid Minhasa, Tariq Yasinc, Nasir Mehboobb,
Malik Sajjad Mehmooda,∗
a
Department of Basic Sciences, University of Engineering & Technology, 47050, Taxila, Pakistan
b
Department of Physics, Riphah International University, Islamabad, Pakistan
c
Department of Chemistry, Pakistan Institute of Engineering and Applies Sciences, 45650, Islamabad, Pakistan

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Keywords: Novel neutron shielding material based on borated high-density polyethylene (HDPE) was prepared in this study.
HDPE nano composites In order to enhance the shielding efficacy of borated HDPE, nano particles of high neutron capture cross section
Neutron shielding material i.e. of cadmium oxide (CdO) were used as neutron absorber. The CdO nano particles were prepared with
Cadmium oxide composite hydroxide mediated (CHM) method and tested with X-ray diffraction to ensure their structural
Boron carbide
parameters. The grain sizes of CdO sample obtained from reflection peaks at 2θ = 30.39° and 23.52° were
Borated polyethylene
24.9 nm and 36.1 nm, respectively. The corresponding hkl values and lattice spacing for above-mentioned
reflection peaks were found (111) & (110) and 0.29 & 0.38, respectively. These nano scale CdO particles were
then mixed in HDPE/B4C composite (containing 10% by wt. of B4C) in predetermining concentrations (i.e. 1%,
2%, and 4% by wt.). The admixture were then pressed in sheets and tested for structural stability and neutron
shielding efficacy. The structural stability analysis with FTIR revealed the fact there was no significant alteration
in HDPE structure on addition of CdO. The values of effective mass removal cross sections from neutron shielding
measurements were 0.1567cm2g-1, 0.1906cm2g-1, and 0.1634cm2g-1 for composites containing 1%, 2%, and 4%
CdO, respectively. Furthermore, among all, composite with 2% CdO has been observed of having best shielding
properties as it contained the appropriate amount of all the constituents. The higher neutron capture cross
section of CdO nano particles was attributed for this significant increase in shielding efficacy of HDPE/B4C/CdO
nano composites as compared to pure HDPE and HDPE/B4C composites.

1. Introduction shielding, a suitable material is the prerequisite and it is therefore;

Radiation protection is generally achieved by placing the shielding
material between the source of ionizing radiation and human beings.
The radiations which must be considered for shielding are: X-rays,
gamma rays, alpha particles, beta particles, and neutrons. Each of these
radiations interacts differently with shielding material. Hence, the
adequacy of shielding material varies with the sort and energy of ra­
diations. Although, nuclear radiations are utilized in many fields e.g.
food preservation industry, medical, and agriculture research etc. but
exposure to nuclear radiations is also dangerous for health. There are
number of factors related to such unwanted exposure of radiations in­
cluding the energy, type, dose, exposure time etc. In order to have
environment for workers in aforementioned areas, indispensable and
necessary radiation protection is required. For an effective radiation
extremely important to study the interaction of radiations and target
materials. In addition, internal and external properties of materials
must be taken into account before designing the shielding prototype.
These properties include the energy of incident radiations, exposure
time, fire resistance, combustion rate, nuclear heating, durability,
temperature, pressure, wear resistance etc. (Chen et al., 2015; Erdem
et al., 2010).
The most important subatomic particle of nuclear technology is
“neutron” and its shielding is a challenge as compare to gamma rays.
This is because they require a lot of protection to stop as they have high
energy, no electromagnetic charge and can penetrate to larger depth.
The choice of neutron shielding material is usually application specific
e.g. heavy metals loaded concrete is used for nuclear energy and
medicine facilities while aerospace industry and mobile nuclear devices

∗
Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: msajjad.82@gmail.com, malik.mehmood@uettaxila.edu.pk (M.S. Mehmood).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.radphyschem.2020.109145
Received 18 March 2020; Received in revised form 30 July 2020; Accepted 18 August 2020
Available online 21 August 2020
0969-806X/ © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Umm-e-Kulsoom, et al.
required light and flexible shielding materials. These light and flexible
materials are usually polymers with additives (lead, gadolinium, boron
etc.) incorporation and called as “polymer nano composites”. It is worth
mentioning that every shielding material faces some constraints e.g.
concrete and lead is unsuitable for shielding applications in high tem­
perature-confined areas whereas higher concentration of boron do not
show any relative outstanding increase in neutron attenuation
(Sukegawa et al., 2011). It is therefore, scientists are trying to develop
novel neutron shielding materials, which are light weight, flexible, and
have larger neutron capture cross-section. In this regard, high density
polyethylene (HDPE) with materials like boron, gadolinium and their
derivatives as fillers shows promising results as far as neutron shielding
performance is concern. The shielding efficiency of nano composites
depends on the concentration, their effective cross sections and
homogenous mixing of these fillers (Wang et al., 2015).
Mainly the neutron shielding materials are designed to absorb fast
neutron rather than the thermal one. However, for this purpose first
step is to slow down the fast moving neutron by moderators which are
then absorbed with the help of suitable absorbers. The aforementioned
fillers have high value of capture cross section for thermal or moderate
neutrons, therefore; it is necessary to slow down the fast neutrons for
absorption (McAlister, 2016). The materials used for slowing down
neutrons should have larger scattering cross section, smaller absorption
cross-section and large energy loss per collision. Therefore, the ele­
ments having low atomic number (e.g. hydrogen, carbon and oxygen)
are used to moderate the fast neutrons, which are then absorbed by the
fillers having high capture cross sections like boron, gadolinium etc.
Neutron shielding is a complex process because during the process of
shielding, gamma rays (which are produced due to the neutron inter­
action with material and from the source) also need to be shielded. It is
therefore, “moderators” and “absorbers” for both i.e. “neutron” and
“gamma rays are necessary in order to have better and more effective
shielding material. (McAlister, 2012).
Although, polyethylene (PE) is the most abundantly used polymer
for shielding purpose but its structural reliability at elevated tempera­
ture and pressure is questionable. In this regard (Harrison et al., 2008),
has compared the neutron shielding effectiveness of HDPE/BN com­
posites with pristine HDPE and aluminum (Al) against 600 MeV en­
ergetic neutrons. They found that the shielding efficacy of HDPE/BN
composite is quite similar to that of pristine HDPE and Al. In another
study, neutron shielding efficacy of HDPE/B4C has been studied by
varying the concentration of B4C in HDPE. This study revealed the fact
that shielding efficacy of composites is relying on the concentration of
B4C. For this purpose, HDPE composites were prepared with different
concentration (7 phr,1 15 phr and 24 phr) of B4C to conclude that these
composites has maximum attenuation for slow neutron (Yasin and
Khan, 2008). (Harrison et al., 2008) also revealed the fact that addition
of boron nitrite (BN) in PE was not only useful for shielding the slow
neutrons but also result in enhancing the mechanical properties of PE/
BN composites. However, coupling agents are required to further en­
hance the tensile strength of this composite. İrim et al. (2008) has
prepared a novel HDPE based composite while using the hexagonal
boron nitride (h-BN) and Gd2O3 nano particles. These composites were
prepared while using the melt mixing technique and tested for gamma
rays and neutron shielding. A relative enhancement of 14–52% and
200–800% in shielding effectiveness for gamma rays and neutron was
evident with the increase in filler contents (İrim et al., 2018) (Uddin
et al., 2020). has investigated the neutron shielding efficacy of HDPE/
B4C experimentally and theoretically and found that HDPE composites
with 10% (by wt.) of B4C showed an optimum balance as far as neutron
shielding, structural and mechanical stability were concerned. More
1
The unit phr stands for parts per hundred, a quantity used to describe the
amount of certain ingredient or filler added to the polymer composite before
curing.
2
Radiation Physics and Chemistry 177 (2020) 109145
recently (Sayyed et al., 2020), has investigated neutron shielding
properties of UHMWPE/MoO3 composites and found that addition of
MoO3 is effective in enhancing the shielding performance of UHMWPE.
This paper aimed at further enhancing the neutron shielding prop­
erties of borated HDPE while using the nano particles of cadmium oxide
(CdO). The CdO nano particles were used because of their high capture
cross section for thermal neutrons and large surface area. The CdO nano
particles were prepared with composite hydro-oxide mediated (CHM)
method. After structural confirmation from XRD data, these CdO nano
particles were mixed with HDPE/B4C admixture (containing 10% of
B4C by weight) in predetermined concentration to obtain the nano
composites of borated PE. The nano composites are the solid materials
having more than one phase with one of the phase has 1, 2, or 3 di­
mensions of less than 100 nm.
The mixing was done with melt mixing technique and hot press was
used for sheet preparation. The prepared sheets of HDPE/B4C/CdO
composites with 1%, 2%, and 4% of CdO were then tested for assessing
the neutron shielding efficacy of composites.
It is pertinent to mention that during the preliminary study, efforts
have been made to enhance the shielding efficacy by deploying boron
as an affordable and essentially-safe foundational neutron absorber,
and to then add more expensive and potentially toxic additional neu­
tron shielding material i.e. CdO in smaller quantities. Boron is deployed
as major constituent i.e. 10 % by weight, and efforts have been made to
remain low (up to 1% by weight) as far as the concentration of CdO
nano particles is concerned. This is because in contrast to the toxicity of
CdO, B4C is essentially non-toxic. Since the toxicity of CdO poses
challenge to the practicability of neutron shield, various solutions are
available to mitigate the challenge either by employing ZrSiO4 (or
other suitable compound) encapsulated CdO nanoparticles as filler or
by using Al coated composites sheets. Notwithstanding the above, the
scope of this paper was restricted to the study of neutron shielding ef­
ficacy of HDPE/B4C/CdO nano composite only.
2. Experimental details
2.1. Materials
The host materials used for this research were HDPE, B4C and nano
particles of CdO. HDPE having melt flow index 20 g.10 min-1, den­
sity = 0.956 g cm-3, and product code M20056, was purchased from
SABIC, Saudi Arabia. B4C having density = 2.52 g cm-3 was purchased
from China, and CdO nano particles were prepared in lab (detail given
below). All three constituents are in powder form and used as such.
2.2. Synthesis of CdO nano particles
Nano-particles of CdO were prepared in lab using CHM methods.
The step wise explanation of CdO synthesis is given below.
• A mixture of 5.15 g of NaOH and 4.85 g of KOH was prepared in
Teflon beaker.
• The beaker containing the mixture was placed in oven at 180 °C
• The mixture was heated until it gets completely melted.
• On melting of hydroxides mixture, 2.54 g of cadmium salt was
added and mixed with glass rod.
• On mixing of cadmium salt, uniform dark brown admixture was
obtained which was then placed at 180 °C for 24 h for crystal growth
• After 24 h, admixture was washed 15 to 16 times with distilled
water and filtered to remove excess amount of hydro peroxides.
• Subsequent to filtration, residue was dried and characterized with
XRD for structural confirmation
2.3. Reaction scheme for CdO synthesis
The detail reaction scheme for abovementioned experimental work
Umm-e-Kulsoom, et al. Radiation Physics and Chemistry 177 (2020) 109145

is given below: to reduce the signal to noise ratio (SNR) after averaging https://www.
sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/fourier-transform-infrared-
Cd(NO3) 2 4H2 O + NaOH Cd(OH)2 + NaNO3
spectroscopy.
At high temperature Cd(OH)2 is not stable chemically and further
split into CdO and water molecules. The CdO nanostructures so formed 3.2. X-ray diffraction technique (XRD)
as precipitate and written as:
Cd(OH) 2 CdO + H2 O X-ray diffraction investigation was completed with a Bruker D-8
Discover x-beam diffractometer consists of source of X-ray, detectors
The utilization of hydroxides blend is likely the key for manu­ and container to hold the sample furnished with a CuKα-radiation. The
facturing the basic oxides at lower temperature. The as-formed mate­ wavelength of CuKα-radiation is equal to 1.54186 Å. 40 mA of current
rials are crystalline with clean surfaces, which are ideal for further re­ and 45 kV of voltage was used for the proper functioning of device.
searching their natural properties and surface functionalization (Khan Reflection mode was used to collect the data from 5°-to-80° while the
et al., 2015). rate of scanning was 1°/min. After getting the spectra, Bragg’s Law was
used for calculation of lattice spacing dhkl.
2.4. Formulation of HDPE/B4C/CdO nano composites
dhkl = n /2sin

After synthesizing and structural confirmation of CdO nano parti­ where.

cles, appropriate amount of CdO powder, HDPE, and B4C were weighs
for preparation of nano composites. The concentration of B4C was • n represent the diffraction level.
chosen 10% (by wt.) which is recently documented as optimized con­ • λ shows the X-ray wavelength
centration of B4C for best shielding efficacy of composite against neu­ • θ is the Bragg’s angle
tron (Uddin et al., 2020). The concentration of CdO powder was varied
to obtain the composites with 1%, 2%, and 4% weight fraction of CdO. By using Scherrer formula particle size (D) perpendicular to the
The mixing of the constituents was done for 10 min at 150 °C in an lattice plane (hkl) can be determine using FWHM value from XRD
internal mixer (thermo electron Rheodrive 4, Beverly, USA) operating peaks. The formula is given by
at 60 rpm. In total 5 formulations were prepared, for details about D = (k )/( cos )
weight fractions please see Table 1 given below.
Here D denotes average crystalline grain size, β gives the value of
2.5. Sheet formation FWHM and k is the constant called crystal factor. Its value is 0.94. The
crystallinity percentage was calculate by using the formula
The homogenous mixture of HDPE with B4C, and CdO was used for X c (%) = [(AT AA)/AT) ×100
sheet preparations. The systematic procedure for preparation of sheets
of millimeter thickness, following steps were carried out at PIEAS la­ where.
boratory while using Gibrite instrumental press and mechanical cold AT = Total area and AA = Amorphous peak area. These areas were
press: determined using a deconvolution procedure of XRD spectra.

1. The machine was preheated at 170° for 4 min at low pressure.
2. The sample was then placed in machine and compressed gradually
till the pressure reached to 200 bars. The temperature was main­
tained at 170 °C.
3. Heating of sample at 170 °C and 200 bars for 4–5 min.
4. After heating sample was removed from press and cooled down to
room temperature
5. The cooling was done at elevated pressure to avoid breakage of
polyethylene chains from scission during relaxation
3. Characterization
3.1. Infrared spectroscopy (FTIR)
FT-IR measurements were performed in total attenuated reflectance
mode using Nicolet-6700 Fourier transform infrared spectrophotometer
(Thermo Electron Corporation, Waltham, MA, USA) in the range of
4000 cm-1 to 400 cm-1 at a resolution of 4 cm-1. All spectra were col­
lected after acquiring 216 scans, and were taken from three/four points
Table 1
Sample codes, concentrations and percentages of HDPE, B4C and CdO in nano
composites.
Sample Code HDPE B4C CdO
3.3. Neutron shielding measurements
In order to measure the transmission of neutrons through developed
composites, solid state neutron detector of ATOMTEX, Belarus with
BDKN-01 He-3 probe was employed. Briefly, the measurement setup
consists of paraffin box with dimensions 100 × 68 cm2 containing 1 Ci
Am–Be neutron source (NCS-R.S USA) at a depth of 5 cm from the top
with opening for sample holder. The total distance from source to de­
tector is 45 cm, and from surface of paraffin box to detector is 40 cm.
Testing procedure for each formulation consists of following steps.
1 Three readings were taken and averaged without any sample to have
background readings
2 Three readings from the sheet of 1 mm thickness were taken by
placing 1 sheet and measuring the transmitted neutrons
3 In order to analyze the effect of increasing sample thickness on
neutron shielding measurements, step 1 and 2 were repeated by
varying thickness of samples upto 12 mm
4 The same procedure were repeated for other samples i.e. UT2 and
UT3
4. Result and discussion
4.1. XRD of CdO

UT 50 g - - To confirm the formation of CdO nano particles, XRD of prepared

UT0 45 g 6.4 g (10%) - CdO powder was performed. The XRD pattern with respective peaks
UT1 44.5 g (89%) 6.4 g (10%) 0.571 g (1%)
and structural parameters of CdO is shown in Fig. 1. The peaks were
UT2 44 g (88%) 6.4 g (10%) 1.15 g (2%)
UT3 43 g (86%) 6.4 g (10%) 2.29 g (4%) recorded where constructive interference occurs while no peaks were
obtained for destructive interference. The characteristic peaks along

3
Umm-e-Kulsoom, et al. Radiation Physics and Chemistry 177 (2020) 109145

Fig. 1. XRD pattern of CdO nano particles. Fig. 2. Density of composites in (g/cm3) as a function of cadmium contents.

Table 2
while following the approach by Zaheer et al. (Uddin et al., 2020), but
Characteristic peaks with hkl values and average crystalline size. still it is useful as far as course of this study is concerned. It shows the
influence of presence of dense Cd (8.15 g/cm3) nano particles within
Peaks (2ϴ) (hkl) lattice spacing D FWHM crystalline size
the relatively low intense matrix of HDPE/B4C composites
values (nm) (radian) (nm)
(0.952 + 2.52 g/cm3). HDPE contains many voids having inter­
30.39° 111 0.29 0.0057 24.9 molecular spaces that are responsible for decreasing its density. Thus
23.52° 110 0.38 0.0039 36.1 adding dense CdO fillers of extremely small average sizes (i.e. ~ 25 nm)
17.39° 100 0.51 0.0014 100.6
are the potential candidates for filling the interspaces and voids of
35.07° 200 0.26 0.0067 21.5
43.72° 211 0.21 0.0049 30.3
HDPE/B4C and results in making reasonable denser matrix without
49.88° 220 0.182 0.0107 14.3 increasing the overall volume of the composite. Hence the compactness
was achieved as well as the increase in efficacy of neutron shielding due
to addition of CdO. The increase in density would also be responsible
with their respective hkl values and average crystalline sizes are listed for increase in percent crystallinity of the composites.
in Table 2. The XRD pattern of CdO shows the characteristic peaks at
2θ = 30.4°, 23.5°, 17.4°, 35.1°,43.7° and 49.9°, respectively. Among all 4.3. FTIR spectroscopy
these, the peaks at 2θ = 30.4° and 23.5° show maximum intensities.
The hkl values for all the peaks are (100), (110), (111), (200), (211), For structural analysis of the composites and confirming the pre­
and (220), respectively. On visiting the literature, it was found that sence of boron and cadmium contents within the matrix of HDPE, FTIR
these peaks belong to CdO as reported by Taj et al. (Manickathai et al., study has been conducted. The FTIR spectra of UT1, UT2, and UT3 are
2008). shown in Fig. 3 and IR active band of interest are given in Table 4.
The average grain sizes obtained from FWHM of the peaks at Following characteristics PE vibrations are evident in each formulation
2θ = 30.39° and 23.52° having hkl values (111) and (110) are 24.9 nm (see Fig. 3)
and 36.1 nm respectively. The values obtained from the graph are
closely matched with the JCPDS (Joint Committee for Powder • –CH stretching vibration of –CH2 group at 2849 cm-1and 2924 cm-1
Diffraction Studies (JCPDS) File No. 05–0640). Lattice spacing for the • Bending vibrations of –CH2 group at 1460 cm-1 and 1470 cm-1
corresponding planes (111) and (110) are 0.29 nm and 0.38 nm show
their cubic properties.
• Rocking deformation of –CH2 group at 717 cm-1 and 730 cm-1
4.2. Density of composites

The structural properties of the composite containing different

material can be determined by linear rule of mixture. This rule is totally
empirical which allowed estimating the mixtures properties constituted
from the materials of totally different nature. The linear density of the
composite is calculated by using the following empirical formula
(Callister and Rethwisch, 2011)
c c = 1 1 + 2 2 + 3 3

where ρc, ρ1, ρ2, and ρ3, are the densities and wc, w1, w2 and w3 are
weight fractions of the composite, PE matrix, B4C and CdO, respec­
tively. The determined values of densities for each sample are tabulated
below and plotted as a function of cadmium contents in Fig. 2.
These values show that UT1 is 7% denser than that of pure HDPE/
B4C matrix, while UT3 is 28% denser as compared to pure PE.
Although, the values tabulated are obtained from empirical relation Fig. 3. FTIR spectra of the composites used during the study.

4
Umm-e-Kulsoom, et al. Radiation Physics and Chemistry 177 (2020) 109145

Table 3 material. The exponential decrease of transmission ratios up to 1.2 cm

calculated densities of the composites. for each formulation is the evidence that HDPE/B4C/CdO is an efficient
Sr. # Sample code Density C (%) by H (%) by B (%) by Cd (%) by composite for neutron shielding. The composite with 1% of CdO by wt.
(g.cm-3) wt. wt. wt. wt. (UT1) seems to be more promising up to 0.1 cm because it is showing
lowest value of transmission ratio up to this thickness. However; as a
1 UT 0.952 85.5 14.5 0 0
whole; the sample containing 4% of CdO by wt. (UT3) is promising
2 UT0 1.079 77 13 10 0
3 UT1 1.147 76.2 12.8 10 1
candidate for neutron shielding on the basis of measured values of
4 UT2 1.215 75.6 12.4 10 2 transmission ratios (see Fig. 4).
5 UT3 1.351 73.8 12.2 10 4 Shielding materials are design to absorb fast moving neutron, and
these fast neutrons needed to be slow down first. In order to slow down
these fast neutrons, the compounds containing hydrogen are used be­
Table 4 cause such compounds slow down or moderate the neutrons up to
IR vibrational bands of interests during the course of this study. certain level by the process of inelastic scattering. After the process of
Wave number (cm-1) Structural Information moderating, the neutrons are absorbed by appropriate shielding mate­
rials. It is therefore, using the materials having larger neutron capture
-CH2 Stretching vibration 2849 cm-1and 2924 cm-1
cross section e.g. Cadmium, Gadolinium are beneficial to achieve the
-CH2 bending vibration 1460 cm-1 and 1470 cm-1
-CH2 rocking deformation 717 cm-1 and 730 cm-1 high values of effective mass removal cross section. The effective re­
B4C 1523 cm-1 moval cross section (Σr) of the materials determine the ability of
CdO 1354 cm-1 shielding of fast neutron, which is define as the probability of first
scattering of neutrons that removes them from the rest of the un-scat­
tered neutrons. The measure of effective cross-section is usually ap­
(Gulmine et al., 2002; Shafiq and Yasin, 2012) plicable for thick sections of any mixture having multiple constituents
(Ancharova et al., 2017; Granada et al., 1987; Sundar et al., 1996). The
It can be seen from figure that the absorption of the characteristics following formula is used for the calculation effective removal cross
PE vibrations is significantly influenced by the incorporation of B4C and section of the composites.
CdO as filler. The –CH stretching vibration of CH2 group is higher for
the sample UT3 i.e. at sample containing 4% of CdO by wt. R
x
r = ln( R o ) x
Furthermore, absorption due to –CH2 rocking and bending vibration is
also increased. This is due to the fact that the contents of CdO and where Rx/Ro is the transmission ratio and calculated by taking ratio of
boron contents are higher thus leaving behind lower amount of –CH2 counts with shielding materials to the counts when no shielding ma­
within the matrix of UT3. terial is there, x is the thickness of the sheet.
In addition to characteristics PE peaks, there are additional peaks at The formula for calculating the half value layer is given by (Zhang
1354 cm-1 and 1523 cm-1 in FTIR spectra of each composite (see Fig. 3). et al., 2017)
These peaks are indication of CdO and boron. The results reported
hereare consisted with within the literature (Wang et al., 2018), and is HVL = ln 2 r
the confirmation of the fact that addition of CdO and B4C has not alter
the PE structure. The results calculated while using the above equations are tabulated
in Table 5.
The density and weight fraction of different ratio of composites
4.4. Neutron shielding measurements having 1%, 2% & 4% of CdO by wt. are given in Table 3, and con­
centration of B4C is fixed as 10% by wt. It is evident from Fig. 5 that
In order to confirm that nano composite is working as an effective mass removal cross section (which is the probability of fast neutron first
neutron shielding material; transmission ratio of neutrons for each collision and separating it from the cluster of un-scattered penetrating
sample is calculated and plotted as function of thickness (shown in neutrons) is higher for UT2 i.e. sample with 2% of CdO. It decreases for
Fig. 4). The transmission ratio is i.e. Rx/Ro is the ratio of neutrons UT3 i.e. sample with 4% of CdO due to the reason that increase in the
counts with shielding materials to the counts without shielding concentration of CdO nano particles results in decrease of hydrogen

Fig. 4. Neutron transmission ratio plotted as function of thickness for sample containing 1% of CdO (a) 2% of CdO (b) and 4% of CdO (c) by weight.

5
Umm-e-Kulsoom, et al. Radiation Physics and Chemistry 177 (2020) 109145

Table 5 It can be seen that the documented values of mass removal cross
Calculated values of mass removal cross section and HVL values. section in literature for HDPE/borax sand/cement composite (con­
Sr. # Composition Sample ρ (gcm-3) Σr (cm-1) Σr/ρ HVL (cm) taining 7.72% of boron by wt.) are 32.2% less than UT2 sample pre­
Code (cm2g-1) pared in this study. Furtherance to it, composites of referred study is
(CdO %) 41.6% heavier than UT2 (sample prepared in this study) (Elwahab
et al., 2019). In other study, effective mass removal section of HDPE
1 HDPE UT (0%) 0.956 0.0891 0.0936 7.4060
2 HDPE/B4C UT0 (0%) 1.079 0.0981 0.0909 7.6226
composite with 8.97% of boron is 0.053 cm2 g-1, which is 58.9% less
3 HDPE/B4C/CdO UT1 (1%) 1.147 0.1797 0.1567 4.4245 than UT2 (sample prepared in this study). These composites are also
4 HDPE/B4C/CdO UT2 (2%) 1.215 0.2316 0.1906 3.6371 23.8% denser as compare to UT2.
5 HDPE/B4C/CdO UT3 (4%) 1.351 0.2211 0.1636 4.2378 El-Khayatt et al. 2010 (El-Khayatt, 2010) have synthesized the
HDPE/B4C composites by varying the concentration of boron. The mass
removal cross section of the composite containing 8.97% boron is
0.0953cm2g-1 which is 58.9% less than UT2. In addition, this composite
isalso 23.8% denser than UT2. More recently (Uddin et al., 2020), re­
ported that the mass removal cross section is 0.0948 cm2 g-1 for HDPE/
B4C composite having density equal to 1.03 g cm-3, which is approxi­
mately 50% lower than UT2 sample prepared in this study. It therefore;
using nano particles as fillers has proved to be a potential approach for
developing novel neutron shielding material with reasonable density
and superior mass removal cross section.

5. Conclusion

In present research, novel neutron shielding materials were pre­

Fig. 5. Calculated values of effective mass removal cross section r in cm2. g-1
plotted as a function of CdO percentage.
contents. For sample with 10% weight fraction of B4C, there is already a
decrease of 1.4% of hydrogen contents and further addition of CdO
result in more decease of hydrogen contents e.g. in sample labeled as
UT3 that contains 4% of CdO and 10% of B4C, a net decrease of hy­
drogen concentration is 2.3%. As the hydrogen plays a significant role
in scattering and slowing down the fast neutrons, it is therefore; the
optimal weight fraction of all the matrix constituents is necessary to
have reasonable effective mass cross section. Basically, the sections
which are thick and constitute while mixing the multiple elements are
often characterized with the concept of effective removal cross-section
(El Abd and Elkady, 2014; Shin et al., 2014).
In the course of current research, the effective balance among the
constituents of formulation i.e. boron, cadmium and hydrogen is re­
quired to achieve the highest value of mass removal cross-section,
which was observed for UT2. For sample with 2% of CdO (UT2), ef­
fective mass removal cross section is 17.9% higher than UT1 (i.e. for the
sample with 1% of CdO) and 14.1% higher than UT3 (i.e. for the sample
with 4% of CdO). This value is approximately 50.9% higher than pure
HDPE and HDPE/B4C with 10% of B4C as reported recently by Zaheer
et al.(Uddin et al., 2020). These results are reflecting the efficacy of
addition of CdO nano particles because cadmium has higher neutron
absorption cross-section. Hence the concentration of constitutes of hy­
drogen, boron and cadmium are balanced in the sample with 2% of CdO
as it has highest value of mass removal cross section among as com­
pared to other composites. Furtherance to it, it is 10.4% lighter than
UT3 and comparable with UT1 as far as density is concerned (see
Table 3).
In comparison with the literature, composite synthesized in this
study is better in both respects, by mass removal cross section and by
density. Mass removal cross section and density of UT2 is 0.2316 cm-1
and 1.216 gcm-3, respectively i.e. much better than the results listed in
Table 6.
pared while incorporating the CdO nano particles in borated HDPE. The
nano particles of CdO were in lab prepared with CHM method and
analyzed with XRD. The XRD data confirmed the formation of CdO
nano particles with grain size of 24.9 nm and 36.1 nm from the re­
flection peaks at 2θ = 30.39° and 23.52. Subsequent to structural
confirmation nano scale CdO particles were mixed in borated HDPE in
predetermined concentrations to obtain the final admixtures. The
HDPE/B4C/CdO admixtures with 10% B4C and 1%, 2% & 4% CdO nano
particles were then pressed into sheets, which were tested with FTIR to
confirm the proper mixing of the constituents. The additional peaks of
CdO and B4C confirmed the proper filling of CdO within the voids and
inter spaces of HDPE matrix. Transmission ratios and mass removal
cross section was determined to assess the neutron shielding capability
for each formulation. The results were obtained by varying the thick­
nesses and the concentration of CdO. It was observed that the trans­
mission ratio of the composites decreases as the thickness increase up to
1.2 cm. The mass removal cross section (Σr/ρ) for sample 1% CdO i.e.
UT1, sample with 2% CdO i.e. UT2 and sample with 4% CdO i.e. UT3
were 0.1567 cm2g-1, 0.1906 cm2g-1 and 0.1636 cm2g-1, respectively.
The corresponding HVL values are 4.4245 cm, 3.6371 cm and
4.2378 cm, respectively. Furthermore, it was revealed that increasing
the concentration of CdO from 2% to 4% affects the composite per­
formance by decreasing the shielding efficacy. This was attributed to
reduction of hydrogen atoms counts. It was concluded that sample with
2% of CdO i.e. UT2 is the best shielding material among all the com­
posites as it has optimal concentration of all the constituents. Its mass
removal cross section is 17.9% greater than UT1 and 50.9% greater
than pure HDPE/B4C composite.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influ­
ence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgment
Dr. Malik Sajjad Mehmood would like to acknowledge University of
Engineering and Technology, Taxila and Pakistan Institute of
Engineering and Applied Sciences, Islamabad, Pakistan for providing
the platform to complete this research work.

6
Umm-e-Kulsoom, et al. Radiation Physics and Chemistry 177 (2020) 109145

Table 6
Comparison of results of current study with literature.
Sr. No. Configuration B (%) Cd (%) ρ (gcm-3) Σr (cm-1) Σr/ρ (cm2g-1) Ref

HDPE + B + Cd 10 1 1.147 0.1797 0.1567 Current study

1 HDPE + B + Cd 10 2 1.215 0.2316 0.1906 Current study
HDPE + B + Cd 10 4 1.351 0.2211 0.1636 Current study
2 HDPE 0 0 0.956 0.0891 0.0960 Uddin et al. (2020)
HDPE + B 10 0 1.0348 0.0981 0.0948
3 HDPE + B 1.24 0 1.78 0.1000 0.0562 Elwahab et al. (2019)
HDPE + B 7.72 0 2.08 0.1570 0.0754
4 PE 0 0 0.920 0.1186 0.1289 El-Khayatt (2010)
PE + B 1.0 0 1.700 0.1221 0.0718
PE + B 8.97 0 1.600 0.0953 0.0596
5 PE 0 0 0.920 0.1870 0.2032 (El Abd and Elkady, 2014; Elmahroug et al., 2014)
PE + B 1 0 1.700 0.1182 0.0738
PE + B 8.97 0 1.600 0.0926 0.0578

Appendix A. Supplementary data
Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://
doi.org/10.1016/j.radphyschem.2020.109145.
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