The BPOp/Al composite and aluminum were cut into plates with
a size of 150 150 3mm3 for the radiation protection measurement.
Tensile specimens with 10 mm gage length were electro-discharge
machined from the rolled composite plate in the rolled
direction and polished to a final thickness of 2.5 mm. Transmission
electron microscope (TEM) specimen was prepared by ion-milling
technique. The Archimedes technique was used to measure the
density of the composite. Tensile test of the composite was performed
on an Instron model 1125 tensile test machine under
0.5 mm/min monotonic loading at room temperature (298 K). Xray
diffraction experiments were carried out using an X-ray diffractometer
(X’pert Analytical Powo 3040) with Cu-Ka radiation, at a
voltage of 40 kV and the current of 35 mA. The grain size was computed
using the Scherrer equation from broadened X-ray line spectra
after accounting for instrumental broadening. The
microstructure was characterized using scanning electron microscope
(SEM, Hitachi S-3000, 30 KV) with backscatter electron
imaging and transmission electron microscope (TEM, Philips CM-
12, 120 KV) with the energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS).
The evaluation of the BPOp/Al composite and aluminum for radiation
shielding was performed at the Beijing Institute of Atomic Energy,
China. We used 137Cs (662 KeV) as the c-ray radiation
source, and the average energy of X-ray is 250 KeV.