Microwave-induced chemical etching (MCE): A fast etching technique for the solid polymeric track detectors (SPTD)

The procedure of chemical etching (CE) or electro-chemical etching (ECE) is an inevitable step to reveal the ion-induced latent tracks in solid polymeric track detectors (SPTD). In this work, a microwave-induced chemical etching (MCE) technique is introduced, for the first time, to etch the SPTDs with much less (about on tenth) time as compared to the traditional etching methods (CE and/or ECE). The photomicrographs of the CR-39 s treated with MCE are presented in the paper and are compared with those processed with CE and ECE. The α-tracks started appearing just after 10 min of etching and were fully developed after 25 min, which usually takes several hours by CE and ECE techniques. The tracks were observed to be developed clearly with well-defined, smooth and sharp edges thereby improving the measurements using image analyser. The MCE technique is found to be promising, simple, faster and convenient.