## 2 Materials and Methods
### Gamma Ray Shielding Properties  
The photon attenuation characteristics were evaluated using data from the EPICS2017 and EPDL97. Both libraries can be interpolated manually. The interpolation of EPICS2017 total atomic cross sections can be made since this library is linearized. However, the interpolation of EPDL97 requires that all partial cross sections be interpolated to obtain the total atomic cross section, as follows:  
\[\sigma_{T}=\sigma_{\text{coh}}+\sigma_{\text{incoh}}+\sigma_{\text{PP in Nuc}}+\sigma_{\text{PP in Ele}}+\Sigma\sigma_{\text{PE},i} \tag{15}\]  
where the total atomic cross section \(\sigma_{T}\) is the sum of the partial cross sections for different interaction processes.  
A recent software was developed called EpiXS [29] which facilitates the interpolations and calculations using EPICS2017 and EPDL97. The EpiXS software contains both photon libraries extracted in the international ENDF-6 format; it performs interpolation of all partial cross sections including each photoionization subshell cross section to calculate for total atomic cross sections. The cross sections are converted to attenuation coefficients using elemental masses from AME2016 considering the abundances in NUBASE2016. This EpiXS software was employed for the evaluation of MAC values based on EPICS2017 and EPDL97.  
The EpiXS software was designed to aid users in interpolating the EPICS2017 and EPDL97 and obtain the required photon attenuation and shielding quantities. Hence, the function and entry forms of the EpiXS is similar to that of the XCOM web program. The user gives the input of the material compositions, densities, and the energies required. Using the aforementioned atomic mass data, the material composition is converted into atom fractions per \(i\)th element. Subsequently, these atom fractions are used to obtain the material's cross section (\(\sigma_{mat}\)) using the relationship [29]:  
\[\sigma_{mat}=\Sigma\ f_{i}\sigma_{i} \tag{16}\]where \(\sigma_{i}\) is the cross section of the \(i\)th element and \(f_{i}\) is the atom fraction of the \(i\)th element. The cross section data are chosen by the user from EPICS2017 or EPDL97 prior to the calculations. Therefore, the \(x\) and \(y\) scales of the linear spline interpolations will be dependent on the user-chosen photoatomic data library. The interpolated cross sections are used by EpiXS to derive the required parameters. All X-ray absorption edges per element are also tabulated by this software and can be viewed from both libraries.  
The Phy-X/PSD program [36] is another program used for calculations, which is a WinXCom based software, hence performs evaluation using XCOM-NIST photoatomic library. It provides the output data in the form of an excel data sheet. The user must follow three successive steps using Phy-X/PSD program. These steps are summarized as the following: (I) define the materials: in this step, one can define the material by inputting the chemical composition in mole or weight fractions in the main page of the program, (II) define the energy: there are two options available in the software for the energy wide energy range or selected energy values emitted from the common radioactive sources such as \({}^{60}\)Co, \({}^{109}\)Cd, \({}^{133}\)Ba, \({}^{137}\)Cs and, (III) selection of the factors to be investigated: the user can select different factors (up to 18 factors) that are used for the radiation shielding investigation. Finally, the user can save the data in an excel file.