Quite recently, ion-track membranes of poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF) have attracted a renewed interest for their applications to next-generation electrochemical devices such as fuel cells [1,2]. In order to produce tracketched pores in PVDF films, several kinds of etching solutions were previously employed. In most cases [3], a highly concentrated aqueous KOH solution with a KMnO4 additive w...

There have been numerous studies on ion-track membranes of poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) and polycarbonate (PC), which are easily prepared by ion beam irradiation and subsequent alkaline etching. More importantly, the ion-track membranes of chemically and thermally stable polyimide (PI) and polyamide (PA), with controlled pore shape and size, may be required for the design of materials tha...

In this paper a methodology for the three dimensional (3D) modeling and simulation of the profile evolution during anisotropic wet etching of silicon based on the level set method is presented. Etching rate anisotropy in silicon is modeled taking into account full silicon symmetry properties, by means of the interpolation technique using experimentally obtained values for the etching rates alon...

Freeze etching of solute model systems (e.g., glycerol or ferritin solutions) demonstrates that cryofixation can introduce serious artifacts due to the segregation of the dissolved or dispersed material from the solvent. Since, in principle, this problem can be reduced by increasing the cooling rate, a new technique has been developed which combines spray freezing with freeze etching. This spra...

background: high and intermediate energy protons are not able to form a track in a solid state nuclear track detector (ssntd) directly. however, such tracks can be formed through secondary particles created during primary radiation nuclear reactions in a ssntd. materials and methods: the protons with primary energies of 9.6 and 30 mev available at the cyclotron accelerator with corresponding lo...

Silicon oxide-based materials such as quartz and silica are widely used in Microelectromechanical Systems (MEMS). One way to enhance capability of their deep plasma etching is to increase selectivity by the use of hard masks. Though this approach was studied previously, information on the use of hard masks for etching of silicon-oxide based materials on 200 mm substrates is scarce. We present r...

The reactive ion etching of quartz and Pyrex substrates was carried out using CF4 /Ar and CF4 /O2 gas mixtures in a combined radio frequency ~rf!/microwave ~mw! plasma. It was observed that the etch rate and the surface morphology of the etched regions depended on the gas mixture ~CF4 /Ar or CF4 /O2), the relative concentration of CF4 in the gas mixture, the rf power ~and the associated self-in...