X-Ray fibre diffraction analysis of 6MV photon-induced Mimosa pudica

Abstract

Mimosa pudica L (M. pudica) fibre is a natural fibre with electrically conductive in nature. Because of it”s electro-active sensing nature, it found very interesting among physicists, chemists, biologists, material scientists and technologists. The M. pudica fibre was extracted from the stem of the herb by sinking the stem in 10% NaOH solution for one week. The processed fibre was irradiated with 6MV X-ray photon beam with a dose of 20Gy using a medical linear accelerator (LINAC).The effect of fibre structure due to irradiation was investigated using X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) techniques. In the present report, the structure of M. pudica fibre was observed as cellulose-II and is monoclinic in nature. Improvement of fibre orientation due to irradiation was confirmed from both XRD and SEM analysis. The irradiated M. pudica fibre shows improved percent of crystallinity along with two new sharp diffraction peaks due to high flux irradiation. In the present work, high energy X-ray photon induced effect and defects on M. pudica fibre have been investigated for its implementation in the field of X-ray detector development