Surfactant-Assisted Etching of Nanochannels

The fabrication and functionalization of synthetic nanochannels has in the last years become of increasing interest for basic research as well as for applications. Nanochannels have an especially high surface-to-volume ratio which makes them ideal for handling very small amounts of liquid in nanofluidic devices or for designing highly sensitive sensing elements. In contrast to their biological counterparts like e.g. α-hemolysin, synthetic channels are more robust towards external conditions. At GSI Materials Research, nanochannels are fabricated by wet chemical etching of latent tracks in thin polymer membranes induced by heavy-ion irradiation. This technique permits the production of various channel geometries and facile control over the resulting channel diameter.