A Study on Surface Chemical Behaviour of Solid State Nuclear Track Detector Films by Etching

Abstract

The etching is a process of modifying the flat smooth surface to identify the structure, phases, and other effects such as the orientation of grains, deformation and distribution of solute elements.  Due to the chemical reaction between the etchant and the detector material, some molecules of the detectors are removed.  The etchant used for LR-115 detectors in the present study is aqueous NaOH solution with 2.5 N.  The bulk etch rate has been estimated by varying the etching time, keeping the etching temperature constant. It has seen that, the bulk etch rate remains almost constant during etching. The result indicates that, rate of chemical etching is uniform in different intervals of etching time.  The average bulk etch rate obtained from experiments was in good agreement with the standard value obtained from earlier experiments.