Preliminary Study of Alternative Environmentally Friendly X-ray Shielding Materials Based on Nano-bismuth (III) Oxide Coated Fabric

Abstract

Chest X-ray is the first imaging procedure that play an important role in identification of COVID-19 as well as medical diagnostic and treatment of COVID-19 patients, in order to increase recovery rates and to lower fatality rates. Regardless of their environmental disadvantages and high toxicity, lead aprons are important materials for personal protection of physicians and patients from X-ray radiation during medical operations. Typically, for standard lead protective aprons, the transmittance values for lite-lead (LL) and regular lead (RL) were approximately 18 % and 17 %, respectively. With an aim to find new materials possibly to replace toxic lead-shielding products, in this study, an environmentally friendly and flexible fabric-based radiation shielding material was manufactured. Polyester fabric was coated by Bi2O3 nano particles using a simple, scalable, and cost-effective method to deposit the nano-particles onto the textile fabric surface. This application method allows the potential production of nano-Bi2O3 coated polyester fabric at the maximum %uptake of 45 and mass per unit area of 0.41 g/cm2 for 1 layer fabric. Radiation attenuation of the fabric increased with the numbers of fabric layers. Five layers of the fabric showed X-ray transmission of approximately 85% when measured at 80 kVp tube voltage, the medical application standard. To increase X-ray protection ability, the nano-Bi2O3 coated polyester fabric surface was recoated with PVA/ Bi2O3 coating composites using K-hand coater. The potential application of the recoated fabric as environmentally friendly and flexible fabric-based radiation shielding material for X-ray attenuation was also demonstrated. The 5-layer PLA/nano-Bi2O3 coated fabric showed the lowest X-ray transmission of 65.7%, implying the moderate improvement of shielding ability. This could lead to an X-ray protection textile garment that can potentially replace lead aprons.