Structural and Photoluminescence Studies of Porous Anodic Alumina Templates Prepared using Different Electrolytes

Abstract

The effect of different electrolytes on the structural and optical properties of porous anodic alumina (PAA) was investigated. PAA templates were synthesized using different electrolytes namely; oxalic, phosphoric, sulphuric and chromic acids maintained at two different temperatures, 18 and 27°C respectively. PAA templates were prepared using two-step anodization process in 0.3 M of sulphuric acid at 20 V, 0.3 M of oxalic acid at 40 V and 0.3 M of phosphoric acid at 90 V, and 0.3 M chromic acid at 50 V. Highly uniform hexagonal cell structure was obtained for the PAA templates synthesized using oxalic acid. It was found that the electrolyte temperature influenced the morphologies and regularities of PAA templates formed on aluminium substrate. X-ray diffraction analysis shows that PAA is in amorphous state. Photoluminescence (PL) analysis showed that a blue PL band occurs in the wavelength range of 350–550 nm. The experimental results indicated that the oxygen-related defect centers, F+ centers, are responsible for the photoluminescence of PAA templates. Among the different electrolytes used in our experiments, oxalic acid showed the highest peak in the emission spectra in PL.

Keywords: Porous anodic alumina (PAA), anodization, scanning electron microscope (SEM), x-ray diffraction (XRD), photoluminescence (PL)

Cite this Article

Suchitra SM, Ramana Reddy P, Aswathi P et al. Structural and Photoluminescence Studies of Porous Anodic Alumina Templates Prepared using Different Electrolytes. Journal of Nanoscience, Nanoengineering and Applications. 2016; 6(2): 20–24p.