Study of the permeability of tomato pericarp etched by low-energy ion beams based on α-particles Irradiation

Abstract

Low-energy ion beam bio-technology has been applied in the biological field and has gained remarkable success in crop and microbe breeding. However, to understand how low-energy ion beams interact with biological materials remains a challenge for researchers who work for the development of ion-beam bio-technology. In this work, tomato pericarp was used as the target sample to study the effect of ion beams on the permeability of biological objects. A series of experiments were conducted via irradiating tomato pericarp samples with low-energy (10 keV ∼ 25 keV) ion beams followed by measuring the pericarp’s permeability using transmissive α particles. The transmissive spectra of α particles and the measurement of the tip number in CR39 gave a quantitative evaluation of the sputtering effect caused by low-energy ions. Meanwhile, natural red dye was used to examine the permeability of irradiated tomato pericarp samples. It was found that the sputtering effect is not only proportional to the ion energy and dose, but dependent on the ion type as well. The damage caused by Ar ions due to sputtering was much more severe than that caused by N ions sputtering with the same dose. Therefore, this study not only demonstrates the permeability difference of biological membranes before and after ion irradiation, but also provides the information on how to optimize the experimental conditions for application of the low-energy ion beam in biology.