Facile Fabrication of Ordered Multi-Tiered Hierarchical Porous Alumina Nanostructures with Multiple and Fractional Ratios of Pore Interval toward Multifunctional Nanomaterials

摘要

Conventional nanoporous anodic alumina films are composed of one-tiered pore arrays that can only render to one-dimensional (1D) nano-structures if they are used as nano-templates. Hence, three-dimensional (3D) nanoporous alumina films are desirable to dramatically increase the variety of nanostructures by template-fabrication for various potentially enhanced performances. Herein we report a facile approach to fabricate a variety of ordered multi-tiered 3D porous alumina nanostructures with multiple integer (m = 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 9, and 10) and fractional ratios (n = 1/2 and 1/3) of the pore interval and pore diameter among different tiers on ITO/glass and Al sheets. The multi-tiered nanostructures and the pore interval ratios of the neighboring tiers can be accurately and independently controlled by a tailoredmultiple stepwise anodization, successively in appropriate acidic electrolytes of sulfuric, oxalic, and/or phosphoric solutions at designed voltages of 15-180 V, corresponding to the multiple or fractional ratios of pore interspacing. Moreover, the multi-tiered hierarchical nanoporous alumina films on ITO/glass substrates exhibited a lower transmittance compared with that of the single-tiered films with ordered cylindrical pores, which can be attributed to the diffusive reflection from the tier interface with different pore intervals. (C) The Author(s) 2016. Published by ECS. All rights reserved.