Fabrication and characterization of aluminum oxide thin film micropatterns on the glass substrate

• Fabrication of the anodic aluminum oxide (AAO) micropatterns as small as 5 μm on the glass substrate.
• Optical characterization of the AAO micropatterns.
• Arrayed AAO micropatterns-an ideal biosensing technical platform with high throughput.

This paper reports a standard lithography-based fabrication process of arrayed anodic aluminum oxide (AAO) thin film micropatterns on the glass substrate and the characterization of their optical properties. The fabrication process is compatible with the MEMS and microfluidics fabrication processes, and it offers great flexibility for fabricating a variety of shapes of AAO micropatterns as small as 5 μm. Experiments find that the optical properties of the as-fabricated AAO micropatterns remain unaffected by the chemicals used in the fabrication process. Specifically, the significant fluorescence enhancement capability and the unique optical interference characteristics of the AAO micropatterns remain unchanged. Due to the flexibility and compatibility of the fabrication process, the AAO micropatterns can be readily integrated on a single chip to form arrayed label-free biosensing technical platform or arrayed fluorescence-based technical platform for a variety of applications.

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