Recent applications of nuclear tracks in solids

With partial support from an NSF US–China exchange program, five Chinese scientists collaborated with me for one or more years during the 1980s and 1990s. This review begins with a discussion of some of the research they did while at Berkeley. That is followed by brief reviews of recent applications of the nuclear track technique to nuclear fusion; molecular identification with nanopores; ion track filters for imaging X-ray astronomy; magnetic studies with nanowires; polymeric nanowires; microbiology with Nuclepore filters; radon and neutron dosimetry; and thermochronology with 238U and 244Pu fission tracks. My review provides a small sample of the interesting topics to which nuclear track techniques are now being applied.