Radiation protection: assessing the shielding performance of iron-reinforced polydimethylsiloxane in comparison to lead

Abstract This study evaluates the radiation shielding properties of Polydimethylsiloxane reinforced with iron. Using the Py-MLBUF program, we calculated and compared the mass attenuation coefficient, linear attenuation coefficient, half-value layer, effective atomic number, and effective electron number with those of lead. The dominance of the photoelectric effect at lower energies and pair production at higher energies is observed. The contribution of Compton scattering remains relatively constant across the energy spectrum, while Rayleigh scattering is negligible. At lower energy levels, composites reinforced with higher iron weight fractions demonstrate higher mass attenuation and linear attenuation coefficients. Increasing iron weight fractions reduces the half-value layer, improving radiation attenuation up to a threshold. The results show that while lead generally has higher attenuation coefficients, the difference is negligible at energies between 0.7 and 4 MeV. Although lead has lower half-value and tenth-value layers, higher iron weight fractions in PDMS also, provide good radiation shielding due to increased effective atomic and electron numbers. Fe-reinforced PDMS at weight fractions of 10%, 20%, 40%, and 60% show significant potential for radiation shielding, especially in the 0.7 to 4 MeV photon energy range, and in applications requiring flexibility and lightweight materials.