Improved Pore Array and Uniformity of Anodic Aluminum Oxide Template by Using a Rapid Thermal Anneal Process

Ordered nanostructure materials have received attention due to their unique physical properties and potential applications in electronics, mechanics and optical devices. To actualize most of the proposed applications, it is quite important to obtain highly ordered nanostructure arrays. The well-aligned nanostructure can be achieved by synthesizing nanostructure material in the highly ordered template. In this paper, Anodic Aluminum Oxide (AAO) templates were fabricated using a two-step anodization process with pretreatment such as electropolishing and annealing. To reduce process time and get well-aligned pore array, rapid thermal anneal by an IR lamp was employed in vacuum state at 500oC for 2 hours. The pore array is comparable to a template annealed in vacuum furnace at 500oC for 30 hours. The well-fabricated AAO template has a mean pore diameter of 70 nm and the interpore distance of 100nm. The pore density can be as high as 1.2×1010cm-2.