The heavy-ion microprobe at GSI — Used for single ion micromechanics

doi:10.1016/0168-583X(88)90012-2

Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section B: Beam Interactions with Materials and Atoms

Volume 30, Issue 3, 2 March 1988, Pages 284-288

https://doi.org/10.1016/0168-583X(88)90012-2 Get rights and content

Abstract

Etching of nuclear tracks can yield unique microscopic structures of technical interest in a wide range of different materials. This has already led to many applications using extended beams. Now the heavy ion microprobe has for the first time been used to create micropatterns by shooting every single ion to its desired position. The paper will describe the components of the microprobe essential to the new technique, give an overview over the basic geometries of single ion micromechanics, and show the result of a first experiment.

References (6)

D. Albrecht et al.
H. Heitmann et al.
J. Mag. Mater.
(1978)
B.E. Fischer et al.
Radiat. Eff.
(1982)

There are more references available in the full text version of this article.

Cited by (55)

Fabrication of functional micro- and nanoporous materials from polymers modified by swift heavy ions
2019, Radiation Physics and Chemistry
Citation Excerpt :
A maximum rectification ratio as high as 550 at voltages of + 2V/-2V was observed. The extensive development of the functional track-etched nanopores is a success to a large degree due to the single-ion irradiation technique that was created at the UNILAC accelerator (GSI, Darmstadt) (Fischer, 1988; Spohr, 2005). The unique possibility to perform measurements on a single pore made it possible to get rid of uncertainties caused by an unknown number of conducting channels in a sample and their non-uniformity.
Similar to ionizing radiation with low LET, swift heavy ions (SHI) produce excitation and ionization as they pass through a polymer. Due to a high local confinement of dissipated energy, SHI produce continuous damage trails (latent tracks) that consist of highly degraded material with increased chemical reactivity. As a result, the polymers irradiated with heavy ions are anisotropic and highly heterogeneous on the nanometer scale. The permeability of ion-irradiated polymer foils can be considerably improved using the exposure to ultraviolet radiation and the extraction of radiolysis products from the tracks. Chemical etching is used to further modify the structure of ion-irradiated polymers and produce micro- and nanostructured membranes. Different methods of ion track etching enable the fabrication of asymmetric nanopores whose shape and dimensions can be controlled at will. In electrolyte solutions, the asymmetric track-etched nanopores possess unique transport properties, such as ionic gating and ionic rectification, which provides a platform for versatile applications that hold potential including biomimetic nanofluidic devices, energy conversion, biochemical sensors, and others.
Science and technology on the nanoscale with swift heavy ions in matter
2013, Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research, Section B: Beam Interactions with Materials and Atoms
Citation Excerpt :
Different from the GSI microprobe, the heavy ion irradiation system at the Japan Atomic Energy Agency in Takasaki is operated with a vertical beam, having the advantage that the objects are exposed horizontally to the beam. The microprobe in Takasaki is mostly dedicated to microbiology [19]. One of the problems the Takasaki biology team has been concentrating on concerns the so-called bystander effect, i.e., the behavior of cells that have not been hit directly by an ion but are located near a cell that has been hit.
Swift heavy ions have stimulated developments of science and technology on the nanoscale due to the specific manner of transferring their kinetic energy in a solid successively in small portions along their trajectories. They thus create absolutely straight, almost cylindrical, and very narrow damage trails of diameter 5–10 nm. In various materials, such as polymers, a suitable etchant can transform these tracks into narrow channels of cylindrical, conical, or other desired shapes. These channels represent a starting point particularly for two major fields: they can be chemically modified to control small species and act, e.g., as sensors and transmitters of specific biomolecules. Irradiation of a sample with only one heavy ion allows the fabrication of single-nanochannel devices enabling measurements of enormous sensitivity. Filling nanochannels with a material provides nanowires. These objects of restricted dimensions exhibit finite-size and quantum behavior and give rise to a broad range of fundamental and applied research. This contribution briefly recollects microtechnological achievements with swift heavy ions that began already in the 1970s, preparing the ground for gradual size decrease down to the nanoscopic objects now under study. Various examples of material modifications on the nanoscale are presented, including recent results obtained with nanochannels and nanowires. Emerging developments are addressed, encompassing in situ recording of processes in biological cells stimulated by well-aimed ion irradiation, the fabrication of three-dimensional nanowire architectures, and plasmonic effects in nanowires.
Photobleaching setup for the biological end-station of the darmstadt heavy-ion microprobe
2013, Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research, Section B: Beam Interactions with Materials and Atoms
Citation Excerpt :
The GSI high-energy heavy-ion microprobe [1] is equipped with a compact end-station for radio-biological experiments, where a 500 nm wide ion beam is injected into the liquid environment of cultures of living biological cells [2] via fast beam switching and fast magnetic steering, single ions are directed into cellular compartments selected by online fluorescence microscopy.
We report the upgrade of the epifluorescence microscope of the GSI heavy-ion microprobe with a galvo-scanned, 488 nm laser diode. The laser is focussed into the object plane by the water-immersion objective resulting in a focal spot size of about 1 μm. To increase temporal and spatial resolution a water-immersion objective with a high numerical aperture is integrated into the custom-build microscope. The upgraded system can now be used to bleach GFP-tagged proteins recruited to DNA damage induced by targeted single-ion irradiation. The system is demonstrated on NIH 3T3 cells with Ku80-GFP ion-targeted in heterochromatic and euchromatic DNA. Fluorescence recovery after photobleaching (FRAP) is shown to be significantly slower in heterochromatin.
Single ion hit detection set-up for the Zagreb ion microprobe
2012, Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research, Section B: Beam Interactions with Materials and Atoms
Citation Excerpt :
The secondary electron yield depends on the incident ion (mass and energy), its charge state and material surface layer [25,26]. The high secondary electron yield obtained on a gold coated polycarbonate surface exposed to 3.6 MeV/amu Xe ions has been demonstrated to be suitable for ion hit detection by Fischer [18,19] a long time ago. He also used two channeltron detectors in coincidence at the GSI microprobe in an attempt to obtain 100% efficiency with an extremely low false number of counts [27].
Irradiation of materials by heavy ions accelerated in MV tandem accelerators may lead to the production of latent ion tracks in many insulators and semiconductors. If irradiation is performed in a high resolution microprobe facility, ion tracks can be ordered by submicrometer positioning precision. However, full control of the ion track positioning can only be achieved by a reliable ion hit detection system that should provide a trigger signal irrespectively of the type and thickness of the material being irradiated. The most useful process that can be utilised for this purpose is emission of secondary electrons from the sample surface that follows the ion impact. The status report of the set-up presented here is based on the use of a channel electron multiplier (CEM) detector mounted on an interchangable sample holder that is inserted into the chamber in a close geometry along with the sample to be irradiated. The set-up has been tested at the Zagreb ion microprobe for different ions and energies, as well as different geometrical arrangements. For energies of heavy ions below 1 MeV/amu, results show that efficient (100%) control of ion impact can be achieved only for ions heavier than silicon. The successful use of the set-up is demonstrated by production of ordered single ion tracks in a polycarbonate film and by monitoring fluence during ion microbeam patterning of Foturan glass.
Microbeam complex at TIARA: Technologies to meet a wide range of applications
2011, Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research, Section B: Beam Interactions with Materials and Atoms
Since 1990 R&Ds of microbeam technology has been progressed at the TIARA facility of JAEA Takasaki. In order to meet a wide variety of ion beam applications, analysis, radiation effect studies, or fabrication in regions of micro- or nano-structures, three different types of ion microbeam systems were developed. In these systems, high-spatial resolutions have been achieved and techniques of micro-PIXE, single ion hit and particle beam writing (PBW) were also developed for these applications. Microbeams, on the other hand, require the highest quality of beams from the accelerators, the cyclotron in particular, which was an important part of the microbeam technology of TIARA. In this paper, the latest progress of the ion microbeam technology and applications are summarized and a future prospect of them is discussed.
Controlled fabrication of ion track nanowires and channels
2010, Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research, Section B: Beam Interactions with Materials and Atoms
We describe a system for fabricating prescribed numbers of ion track nanochannels and nanowires from a few hundred down to one. It consists of two parts: first, a mobile tape transport system, which, in connection with an ion beam from a heavy-ion accelerator (nuclear charge Z above 18 and specific energy between 1 and 10 MeV/nucleon) tuned down to low flux density by means of defocusing and a set of sensitive fluorescence screens, can fabricate a series of equidistant irradiation spots on a tape, whereby each spot corresponds to a preset number of ion tracks. The tape transport system uses films of 36 mm width and thicknesses between 5 and 100 μm. The aiming precision of the system depends on the diameter of the installed beam-defining aperture, which is between 50 and 500 μm. The distance between neighboring irradiation spots on the tape is variable and typically set to 25 mm. After reaching the preset number of ion counts the irradiation is terminated, the tape is marked and moved to the next position. The irradiated frames are punched out to circular membranes with the irradiation spot in the center. The second part of the setup is a compact conductometric system with 10 picoampere resolution consisting of a computer controlled conductometric cell, sealing the membrane hermetically between two chemically inert half-chambers containing electrodes and filling/flushing openings, and is encased by an electrical shield and a thermal insulation. The ion tracks can be etched to a preset diameter and the system can be programmed to electroreplicate nanochannels in a prescribed sequence of magnetic/nonmagnetic metals, alloys or semiconductors. The goal of our article is to make the scientific community aware of the special features of single-ion fabrication and to demonstrate convincingly the significance of controlled etching and electro-replication.

View all citing articles on Scopus

View full text

The heavy-ion microprobe at GSI — Used for single ion micromechanics

Abstract

J. Mag. Mater.

Radiat. Eff.