A facile approach to formation of through-hole porous anodic aluminum oxide film

Highly ordered through-hole anodic porous alumina film was fabricated using a facile single side and two-step anodization approach without any special pretreatment. The as-fabricated anodic aluminum oxide (AAO) film has a mean pore diameter of 80 nm and the interpore distance is ∼150 nm. The pore density can be high as 1.0×1010 cm−2. During the processes of removal of aluminum substrate and pore opening, a simple setup was used. The evolution of surface morphology of the AAO film was characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The fabricated pore-through AAO film can then be used as templates for growth of well aligned nanowire, nanotube and nanodevice.