Porous Anodic Alumina Template Formation: Deposition Technique Dependence

Porous anodic alumina (PAA) oxide layers have been deposited on TiN/SiO2/Si by both the vacuum evaporation (VE) and RF magnetron sputtering (MS) techniques. The deposition technique dependence of the pore size at the surfaces of the anodic aluminum oxide (AAO) membranes has been investigated after two step anodization process. The nanochannel arrays of AAO membranes were characterized with scanning electron microscopy (SEM), atomic force microscopy (AFM) and Fourier transform infrared attenuated total reflectance (FTIR-ATR) analysis. Chemical composition and film structural properties were investigated by x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and high resolution x-ray diffraction (HR-XRD) analyses. It is shown that uniform pore density in AAO templates is obtained using Al films deposited using RF sputtering technique.