Effect of Ti, Bi, W, Zn, and Pb nanoparticles on the radiation shielding properties in transparent medium: a Monte Carlo study

Abstract

Recently, researchers have tried to examine novel materials to enhance radiation shielding in hospitals and medical centers as a replacement for regular shielding materials such as lead and concrete. To assess the impact of new radiation shield materials, this study is devoted to the examining the silicon shields as well as silica and tellurium glasses containing nanoparticles and micro-particles. For this purpose, using Monte Carlo code MCNPX, the role of Ti, Bi, W, Zn, and Pb particles in silicon shields, also tellurium and silica glasses incorporating Bi2O3, ZnO, TiO2, WO3, and PbO particles in nanometer and micrometer scales with proportions of 10%, 15%, 20%, 25%, 30%, 35%, 40%, and 45% are examined. The MCNP results demonstrate a strong agreement with the XCOM data, with a relative difference less than 2.11% across all samples. The Kolmogorov-Smirnov (K-S) test has been conducted to evaluate the consistency between the simulated data and the XCOM data, with the maximum vertical deviation (Dmax) less than 0.01%. The results show the improvement of radiation protection characteristics following the particle size reduction from micrometers to nanometers in all shields. Moreover, it was observed that increasing the proportion of nanoparticles in the shields enhances the protective properties. As a result, the shields containing the smallest size and accommodating the highest number of particles exhibit the best radiation shielding properties. Finally, the tellurium glasses doped with 45% nanoparticles of WO3 demonstrated the best shielding properties.