Heavy Ion Nuclear Tracks - An Emerging Technology

One necessary requirement for a systematic study of nuclear tracks as a structuring tool has been the advent of powerful heavy ion accelerators. Such an instrument is the UNILAC at GSI Darmstadt, where monoisotopic nuclear tracks can be produced with defined range, angle of incidence, and areal dose, using virtually any insulator as target material. In contrast to high dose implantations, track applications are characterized by a very small beam time consumpion. This opens the door for a future large-scale application of such accelerators. Four commercially feasible track applications are described : (1) Production of single-hole membranes and their application in medical diagnostics. (2) Nuclear track filters with high aspect ratio (length/diameter) of the holes. (3) Application of latent nuclear tracks for the fining of magneto-optic materials. (4) Heavy ion lithography for application in microcircuit engineering.