Formula omitted] treatment and vacuum effects in proton beam micromachining of PADC

Abstract

Polyallyl diglycol carbonate (PADC) has been shown to be a suitable material as a thick resist for proton beam writing [Rajta, I., Baradács, E., Bettiol, A.A., et al., 2005. Optimisation of particle fluence in micromachining of CR-39. Nucl. Instrum. Methods B 231, 384.]. This material is commonly used as an etched track type particle detector. In most cases it is used to detect alpha particles in normal air conditions. However, to use this material as proton or alpha micromachinable resist, one needs to irradiate the material in vacuum. In this work, we investigated the effects of vacuum on the micromachinable properties of PADC. Our investigations proved that there were no drawbacks of the vacuum storage of the samples; so we concluded that PADC is a suitable material as a PBM resist in this respect, too. Another part of the current work concentrated on the effect of post-irradiation CO 2 treatment of the samples. Such a treatment increased the radiation sensitivity of PADC, i.e. reduced the required irradiation fluence. We have found that approximately 60% of fluence that of not-treated samples was sufficient to develop fully the radiation damaged structures.