Guiding of slow neon and molecular hydrogen ions through nanocapillaries in PET

The transmission profiles of atomic 3 keV Ne7+ ions and molecular 1 keV H2+ and H3+ ions passing through nanocapillaries were studied. Capillaries with a diameter of 100 nm and a length of 10 μm in insulating PET polymers were used. The high aspect ratio of 100 is achieved by the method of etching ion tracks produced by high-energy xenon impact. The angular distributions of the transmitted projectiles show that the majority of ions are transported in their initial charge state along the capillary axis even when the capillaries are tilted with respect to the incident beam direction. This result indicates ion-guiding, which is produced by charge-up effects influencing the ion trajectories in a self-supporting manner. The guiding effects are found to be different for highly charged neon and singly charged molecular hydrogen. Negligible fragmentation of the molecular ions was observed.