A Green and Sustainable Solution for Neutron Shielding: Preparation and Evaluation of Biodegradable Boron‐Incorporated Rigid Polyurethane Foam Composites With Enhanced Radiation Attenuation and Physicomechanical Features

ABSTRACT In today's world, the materials showing radiation shielding ability and environmental sustainability are undoubtedly required for innovation in material science. With this perspective, in the current work, amorphous boron‐incorporated bio‐based rigid polyurethane foams were prepared using biopolyol produced from epoxidized soybean oil. The content of boron varied from 1 to 20 php in the foam samples. The influence of boron inclusion on various key features, such as structural, cellular, thermal stability, heat insulation, compressive strength, and neutron shielding performance of bPUFs was examined in detail by ATR‐FTIR, NMR, SEM, TGA, as well as thermal conductivity, compressive strength, and radiation shielding tests, respectively. The scanning electron microscopy photomicrographs indicated that all foam samples preserved their well‐ordered elliptical shapes and regular closed‐cell configuration, thanks to the occurrence of good compatibility between boron and polyurethane by forming secondary chemical bonds. Moreover, the obtained results depicted that initial boron inclusion brought about little improvement in insulation performance and about a 42% increase in compressive strength, which was caused by augmentation in the number of closed‐cell percent with noteworthy anisotropy and a decrement in cell size due to effective nucleation via boron particles. Furthermore, the boron‐filled foam samples exhibited substantial elevation in neutron absorption capacity, accompanied by roundly 2.5‐fold increment in macroscopic cross‐sections and mass attenuation coefficients as well as 3.0‐fold decrement in half‐value layers. In conclusion, greener and sustainable rigid polyurethane foams having improved physicomechanical properties and neutron shielding efficiency were obtained with this comprehensive study.