Growth of copper-indium nanorods on Si substrate using porous anodic alumina as template

Abstract

Copper-indium nanorod arrays have been synthesized by electrodeposition using porous anodic alumina nano template supported on a silicon substrate. Porous anodic alumina template was fabricated by evaporating aluminium film onto silicon substrate and then anodizing the aluminium film in diluted phosphoric acid. The approach employs a plasma etching to penetrate the alumina pore barrier layer before electrodeposition, which enables direct electrical and chemical contact with the silicon substrate electrode. The resulting template and copper-indium nonorods obtained were characterized using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and energy-dispersived X-ray spectroscopic analyzer (EDS), the pores of alumina are found to have dimensions of 150–250 nm pore diameters and 330–510 nm pore spacings, partial filling of the pores of the alumina template by Cu-In is achieved. The results of this work reveal that the alumina nano template is particularly well suited to the etching mask and template-assisted growth of nanostructures to be integrated into rigid substrate.