Production of particle-track membranes by means of a 5 MV tandem accelerator

Track‐Etched Nanopore/Membrane: From Fundamental to Applications

“…The second method is based on high‐energy ion beams from accelerators. [ 57 ] Despite the high cost and lower particle flux stability, accelerator‐based ion irradiation becomes more and more common due to its controllability of energy and impact angle, especially for single‐track fabrication. For now, the single‐track fabrications are possible at GSI (Darmstadt, Germany) and GANIL (Caen, France) facilities.…”

Recent progress in nanomaterial-functionalized membranes for removal of pollutants

“…It is a two-step (tracking ( Figure 5 A(a)) and chemical etching ( Figure 5 A(b))) membrane fabrication technology that uses nuclear tracks on polymer films for the production of porous membrane. There are two methods to produce latent tracks: using high-energy ion beams from accelerator or irradiating with fragments of nuclear fission (californium or uranium) ( Ferrante, 1964 ; Lück et al., 1990 ). Chemical etching is a process of removing damaged zone of the tracks to form a hollow channel and is a crucial stage for determining the pore size/shape of the membranes.…”

Publisher's Note

“…In the following step, these linear but randomly distributed spaced tracks are converted to pores by means of chemical etching 16–18. The track‐etched process is a very versatile method to fabricate polymeric membranes and was successfully applied to broad range of polymers, such as polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF),19, 20 polyimide,21 and most commonly used polyethylene terephthalate22 (Figure 2A and B) and polycarbonate 23. By controlling the conditions of irradiation and chemical etching, the pore size and pore density can be independently varied over a large range.…”

“… SEM micrographs of nanoporous templates: Top view (A) and cross‐sectional view (B) of track‐etched membranes. Reproduced from ref 22…”