Preparation and performance of cesium iodide/natural leather wearable X-ray shielding composites

With the rapid development of nuclear science and technology, there has been an increasing application of high-energy rays in medicine, industry and other fields, which puts forward higher requirements on the performance of shielding materials, and developing new protective materials to effectively reduce radiation harm has thus become an important goal in the field of radiation protection. Here, an advanced wearable protective composites with excellent shielding performance for low- and medium-energy X-rays which using natural leather (NL) as the substrate and CsI as the high Z elements (Z elements refer to the elements with the plateau subral number) source was constructed via “impregnation-desolvation” strategy. The results indicate that the CsI is stably loaded and well dispersed into the hierarchical structure of NL. A 4.5 mm thickness CsI_2.0/NL displays excellent attenuation efficiency of higher than 95% for the low-energy X-ray (16-48 keV) and higher than 85% for the medium-energy X-ray (65 keV), which is comparative or superior than that of 0.25 mm Pb plate, and its density is only 8.6% of Pb plate. In addition, the mechanical strength and water vapor permeability of the prepared material not only meet the requirements of national standard for protective clothing but also exceed those of the commercial lead apron. This work shows promising potential of CsI_x/NL to be an ideal wearable X-ray shielding composites which features light weight, convenient and high X-rays shielding capabilities.