Preparation Of Highly Filled Lead Tungstate/polyvinyl Alcohol Composite Fiber For γ-ray Protection Performance Study

Currently commercially available wearable radiation personal protective equipment（PPE）is mainly made of rubber,which is not comfortable to wear（such as poor air permeability and water vapor permeability problems）.It seriously affects the efficiency of nuclear-related personnel.For this reason,we propose highly filled polymer radiation protection fibers,which are processed into textile fabrics with good flexibility and breathability and moisture permeability,giving PPE excellent wearing comfort and radiation protection safety.In this paper,Pb WO₄（PWO）withγ-ray protection function is selected as the filler and polyvinyl alcohol（PVA）containing a large amount of-OH as the matrix,and the highly filled PWO/PVA composite fiber and its textile fabric are prepared through wet spinning process by constructing a large amount of hydrogen bonds between PWO and PVA.The correlation between surface modification of functional particles,interfacial action of highly filled polymer fibers,morphology and properties is investigated.First,styrene maleic anhydride（SMA）surface modification of PWO particles is used to enhance the interfacial interaction between PWO and PVA matrix by constructing hydrogen bonds to obtain filler filling up to 60 wt%PWO@SMA/PVA composite fibers by wet spinning.It is shown that PWO particles are coated by SMA surface to form PWO@SMA core-shell structure with particle size reaching 2.87μm and absolute value of zeta potential all greater than 40 m V,which is conducive to the suspension and stability of large density PWO particles in spinning stock solution.Secondly,the formation of a large number of hydrogen bonds between-COOH on SMA and-OH on PVA promotes strong interfacial action in highly filled PWO/PVA composite fibers,uniform dispersion of fillers and good interfacial compatibility to achieve improved mechanical properties of composite fibers.Importantly,the 60 wt%PWO@SMA/PVA fabric has 31.13%γray（105 ke V）shielding and 66 mm/s air permeability,which can give its textile products radiation protection safety and wear comfort.Secondly,to further enhance the interfacial interaction between PWO and PVA,SMA and BPET are used to synergistically surface-modify PWO,and composite fibers with fillings up to 70 wt%PWO@SMA-BPET/PVA are obtained by wet spinning.It is shown that the surface synergistic modification of SMA and bis（dioctyl pyrophosphate）ethylene titanate（BPET）further enhances the interfacial interaction between PWO and PVA to achieve stable wet spinning process of 70 wt%PWO@SMA-BPET/PVA composite fiber,uniform PWO dispersion and excellent interfacial compatibility.Theγ-ray（105 ke V）shielding rate of 70 wt%PWO@SMA-BPET/PVA fabric reached 36.6%,and the air permeability and water vapor permeability reached 116 mm/s and 5388 g/（m²·d）,respectively,further enhancing the comprehensive performance of the fiber fabric.This study provides a simple and feasible method for the preparation of highly filled polymer composite fibers,laying the foundation for the development of PPE that is safe and comfortable to wear for radiation protection.