Effect of Different Gamma Dose and Chemical Etching on Pre- and Post-Alpha-Irradiated PM-355 Polymer

Abstract

This work is based on the effect of different gamma doses with pre- and post-alpha-irradiated PM-355 polymer (polycarbonate of allyl diglycol). The phase crystallinity and structural analysis of the reference and irradiated PM-355 polymer were analyzed using an X-ray diffraction (XRD) study. It is revealed that the irradiation and etching reduce the %crystallinity but increase the crystallite size of the PM-355 polymer. The increase in crystallite size of PM-355 polymer after irradiation is supported by the scanning electron microscopic (SEM) analysis. The etching of the samples results in an increase in its track diameter. The optical band gap energy, measured by ultraviolet-visible (UV-VIS) spectroscopy, shows a decrement trend with the increase of gamma and alpha irradiation doses, and etching for all sets of samples under investigation. The number of carbon atoms per conjugation and per cluster has increased after gamma irradiation and etching. However, the increment is more pronounced for etched samples compared to nonetched ones. This indicates that etching results in a bigger size of cluster. Photoluminescence (PL) for both cases before and after etching has a dominant peak around 430 nm before and after irradiation, and change in peak intensity after irradiation confirmed that particle bombardment induced defects and clusters in the PM-355, which serves as nonradiative centers. The polymer can be used as a detector for gamma irradiation.