Preparation and properties characterization of a novel soft robots partially made of silicone/W-based composites for gamma ray shielding

Wang, Jie; Zheng, Tengfei; Gao, Yong; Wang, Dengwang; Cui, Wei; Fan, Jiakun; You, Zhiming; Zhang, Jing; Du, Xin; Qiao, Zhaopeng; Wang, Xudong; Wang, Sheng; Xu, Zhanglian; Wang, Chaohui

doi:10.1016/j.pnucene.2020.103531

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…In the past few years, various kinds of soft robots [12], such as the soft robot hand [13][14][15], bioinspired soft robotics [16,17], etc., have been proposed and studied, which can be used in fields such as healthcare, humanmachine interfacing, electronic, etc. Nowadays, soft robotics have come into being with amplified flexibility, strength, and rigidity to mimic biomimetic motions and perform tasks in uncertain environments [18]. Martin Held et al [17] synthesized and characterized a biodegradable and stretchable elastomer in soft electronic platforms, which can be applied in biofriendly packaging and healthcare.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…After the Fukushima nuclear disaster, many robots have been developed to enter areas with high level radioactivity. Besides aerial and ground rigid robots, soft robots were also proposed for sampling, radiation detection, and measurement [18]. In light of high radioactivity, potential high temperature, and high pressure [11,20,21] in those areas, the materials of the soft robots were required to be flexible and irradiation-and high-temperature-resistant.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Characterization of Silicone-Tungsten-Based Composites as Flexible Gamma-Ray Shields

et al. 2021

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Robots are very essential for modern nuclear power plants to monitor equipment conditions and eliminate accidents, allowing one to reduce the radiations on personnel. As a novel robot, a soft robot with the advantages of more degrees of freedom and abilities of continuously bending and twisting has been proposed and developed for applications in nuclear power industry. Considering the radiation and high-temperature environment, the overall performance improvement of the flexible materials used in the soft nuclear robot, such as the tensile property and gamma-ray shielding property, is an important issue, which should be paid attention. Here, a flexible gamma-ray shielding material silicone-W-based composites were initially doped with nano titanium oxide and prepared, with the composition of 20 silicone-(80-x) W-(x) TiO2, where x varied from 0.1 to 2.0 wt.%. Structural investigations on SEM and EDS were performed to confirm the structure of the prepared composites and prove that all the chemicals were included in the compositions. Moreover, the tensile property of the composites at 25, 100, and 150 °C were investigated to study the effect of working temperature on the flexibility of the compositions. The attenuation characteristics including the linear attenuation coefficients and mass attenuation coefficients of the prepared silicone-W or silicone-W-TiO2-based composites with respect to gamma ray were investigated. The stability of the silicone–tungsten-TiO2-based composite at high temperature was studied for the first time. In addition, the influence of nano TiO2 additive on the property’s variation of silicone-W-based composites was initially studied. The comparison of the properties such as the tensile elongation, thermal stability, and gamma-ray shielding of the synthesized silicone-W and silicone-W-TiO2 composites showed that the addition of nano TiO2 powders could be useful to develop novel gamma-ray-shielding materials for radiation protection of soft robots or other applications for which soft gamma-ray-shielding materials are needed.

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