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Gamma-ray detection and studying its interactions with matter is very important and serves in many fields of research. Besides, investigation of new shielding materials against gamma-ray will provide a lot of solutions for several problems accompanied by the presence of radiation sources in wide areas of applications, such as industry, medicine, agriculture, research laboratories, and nuclear power plants. In the present work, different gamma-ray attenuation parameters will be calculated theoretically using different metal chlorides mixed with epoxy resin polymers at different weight ratios. These attenuation parameters were calculated in a wide energy range started from 0.05 up to 3 MeV. This wide energy range covers almost the most known radionuclide gamma-ray energies. The obtained results were compared with pure epoxy resin polymer to show how well the modification of polymer properties was when mixed with other materials. Also, all mixture's attenuation parameters results were compared with lead metal results to check its validity as a gamma-ray shielding material. The obtained results found to be promising and the presented materials can be used instead of lead metal as an effective material in radiation protection.

In the present work we investigated the gamma radiation parameters as mass attenuation coefficients μ/ρ, the total atomic scattering cross-sections σν, the electronic scattering cross-sections se, the effective atomic numbers Zeff, and the effective electron densities Neff for some polymers such as polyoxymethylene (CH2O), poly acrylonitrile (C3H3N), natural rubber (C5H8), poly ethyl acrylate (C5H8O2), polyphenyl methacrylate (C10H10O2), and polyethylene tetraphthalate (C10H8O4). The gamma ray photons were detected by NaI(Tl) detector with resolution of 8.2 % at 662 keV, using radioactive gamma ray sources 57Co, 133Ba, 137Cs, 54Mn, 60Co, and 22Na at energies 122, 356, 511, 662, 840, 1170, 1275, and 1330 keV. Values of μ/ρ for the chosen polymers decrease with increasing energy. The results of investigated data are useful in plastic industry, building materials, agriculture fields radiation shielding, accelerator centers, polymer industry, medical field, etc.

In the present work, a glass system with developed composition consisting of B 2 O 3 , ZnO, Na 2 O and Fe 2 O 3 samples has been investigated. Glass samples were prepared using the melt quenching method and the density of the system was measured using Archimedes' principle. Spectroscopic analysis using a gamma source and a high-purity germanium detector at four energies of 0.0595, 0.6617, 1.173, and 1.333 MeV emitted from Am-241, Cs-137, and Co-60 were used to determine the attenuation parameters of present glass composites. The sample containing 45 B 2 O 3  + 10 Na 2 O + 40 ZnO + 5 Fe 2 O 3 (coded BNZF-4) had the highest mass attenuation coefficient (MAC) value at all the energies discussed compared to the other composites. Whoever, the BNZF-1 sample had the lowest value at all ranges of energies. The transmission factors (TF, %) of the manufactured samples were calculated, at 0.0595 MeV (TF, %) values are 32.6429 and 6.4612 for samples BNZF-1 and BNZF-4, respectively. The statistical results demonstrated significantly better to increase the ZnO concentration in the sample, where the percentage of zinc oxide inside the prepared glass samples has the following direction BNZF -4 > BNZF -3 > BNZF -2 > BNZF -1. The significance of this study is that transparent, environmentally harmless glass composites with relatively high density have been prepared that can be used as shielding materials against gamma rays, especially at low energies., (© 2024. The Author(s).)