Ion Track Technology for Innovative products
(E.FERAIN, H.HANOT (hanot@poly.ucl.ac.be), Université Catholique de Louvain, Laboratoire des Hauts Polymères)
it4ip is the nucleus of a new spin out from the Université catholique de Louvain (Belgium) dedicated to the development and production of unique templates based on energetic ion track technology.
With more than 15 years of experience in the development and production of well-established track etched polymer membranes made from a process patented by UCL, our knowledge and expertise are continuously improved by the way of on-going R&D projects funded by the European Commission, national and regional Belgian funding and other sources.
The close collaboration between different UCL laboratories provides a highly skilled team of scientists and engineers having a considerable pool of knowledge to supply the right answer to your problem.
it4ip technology is used to track and etch polymers as a film or as a thin layer deposited on a support. Track etched sheets are made of polycarbonate, polyimide or PET, while thin layers of these polymers can be track-etched after deposition on a substrate such as glass, quartz or silicon. Using the specific features of this technology, pore size and pore density are controlled over wide ranges.
A variety of materials (metals, semiconductors, oxydes, heterostructures) can be deposited into the pores as nanowires or nanotubes; these structures can be produced with over wide range of aspect ratios with excellent shape control, and can be either used in-situ or easily harvested by simple chemical dissolution.
It4ip technology is also able to confine nanopores and hence nano-objects into zones as small as 1 micron square (patterning process).
Templates can be used as separation barriers and flow controllers in devices such as chemical and biochemical sensors and analysers (lab on a chip, microtitre plates, ...)
Templates can be employed for synthesis of metallic or organic nano-objects used as nano-electrodes, interconnects, tips (AFM, field emission, ...), sensing elements (magnetic, chemical, biochemical), ...
Templates can be supplied on substrates such as glass, quartz and silicon and incorporating circuitry
http://www.it4ip.be
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