Available online at www.sciencedirect.com Radiation Measurements 36 (2003) 605 – 609 www.elsevier.com/locate/radmeas Invited Talk The emergence of new ion tract applications D. Fink a ; ∗ , P.S. Alegaonkar a; f , A.V. Petrov a; g , A.S. Berdinsky b , V. Rao c , M. M uller a , K.K. Dwivedi d , L.T. Chadderton e a Hahn-Meitner-Institut, Glienicker Strasse 100, Berlin D-14109, Germany b Novosibirsk State Technical University, Karl-Marx Avenue 20, Novosibirsk 630092, Russia c Mangalore University, Mangalagangotri 574199, Karnataka, India d Arunachal University, Rono Hills, Itanagar, Arunachal Pradesh 791111, India e Institute of Advanced Studies, ANU Canberra, GPO Box 4, ACT, Australia f Department of Physics, University of Pune, Pune 411007, India g Institute of Solid State Physics, NASB, P. Brovka Street 17, 220072 Minsk, Belarus Received 21 October 2002; accepted 10 May 2003 Abstract The recent years have brought a renaissance of interest in ion tracks, for the sake of novel applications. This paper summarizes some of the newly emerging possibilities, and the strategies that have been initiated. Only a few applications that are based on latent tracks have emerged since then, such as the exploitation of phase transitions, chemical changes, the enhanced free volume along latent tracks, or their capability to trap diusing penetrants. For contrast, etched tracks in both polymer foils and SiO2 layers appear to have a much greater application potential. Compact rods and tubules as well as dispersed nanosized matter can be embedded within the etched tracks to form the base of various applications. Some of them are summarized, and a few examples are described in detail. c 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Swift heavy ions; Latent tracks; Etched tracks; Galvanic deposition; Chemical deposition; Microtransformers 1. Introduction With conventional microelectronics approaching to ever narrower sizes at steadily increasing production costs, many small- and medium-sized companies have realized that they will not survive the ever harsher competition and, therefore, look out for alternatives. Just in time, polymeric electronics is coming up with dramatic pace, oering new previously un- foreseen applications such as exible thin-printed transistor electronics, large-size displays, and others, which will soon inuence daily life. It appears that ion tracks gain a renais- sance of interest in this connection as well. These nanosized structures appear to be capable to cover the bridge between the ‘classical’ silicon-based, and the new polymer-based ∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +49-30-8062-3029; fax: +49-30- 8062-2293. E-mail address: nk@hmi.de (D. Fink). electronics. Furthermore, as ion tracks can also be formed in photoresist and SiO2, which both are the vital components of many silicon-based structures, new silicon/track hybrid structures may be designed. It appears that ion tracks in polymer foils will nd a multitude of new interesting appli- cations not only in electronics but also in other elds such as medicine or optics. We want to touch briey some of them in this communication. 2. Applications of latent tracks One has to distinguish between the application of latent, i.e. as-implanted ion tracks, and etched tracks. Latent tracks emerge from the primary deposition of high energy (∼MeV to ∼GeV) inside a tiny target volume (‘ion track core’, ∼10 −15 –10 −14 cm 3 ), and within an extremely short time (∼10 −17 –10 −15 s), by swift heavy ions. These extraordi- nary transient conditions lead to dramatic modications of 1350-4487/$ - see front matter c 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/S1350-4487(03)00209-9