ScienceAsia 26 (2000) : 175-179 |doi: 10.2306/scienceasia1513-1874.2000.26.175

Production of Nuclear-Track Etched Membranes

Pikul Wanichapichart^a,*, Thawat Chittrakarn^a, Witoon Sujaritturakarn^a and Hans GL Coster^b

ABSTRACT: Track etched membranes were prepared in the laboratory by exposing commercially available polycarbonate sheets of 6 m thickness to alpha particles emitted from nuclear reaction of (n, alpha) followed by chemical etching. A series of membranes were produced using different bombardment and etching periods and the hydraulic conductivity of the resulting porous membranes were measured for applied pressures from 10 kPa to 50 kPa. It was noted that at higher pressures the hydraulic conductivity declined with pressure, probably because the track etched pores, as evidenced by atomic force microscopy, were not normal to the membrane surface and this may have caused a partial collapse of the pores at higher pressures. It was found that a two hour (n, alpha) bombardment at 6.5x10⁸ neutron.m^-2.s^-1 flux together with a five minute etching in 6N NaOH at 85 ^oC produced membranes with a hydraulic permeability for water of 158x10^-10 m³.N^-1.s^-1, which is comparable with to that of a commercial (“Millipore”) MF membrane.

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a Biophysics, Membrane Science and Technology Research Unit, Prince of Songkla University, Thailand.
b UNESCO Centre for Membrane Science and Technology, Department of Biophysics, University of New South Wales, Sydney Australia 2052.

* Corresponding author.

Received 25 Jan 2000, Accepted 7 Jun 2000