Anodized aluminum oxide template enabled nanostructure formation and method thereof

Abstract

The present invention relates to an anodized aluminum oxide template that is used to grow periodic nanostructure and method of fabrication of the said template. The invention further relates to the fabrication of the respective periodic nanostructures from diverse materials using hydrothermal and/or CVD method for growing the said nanostructure. The AAO template enabled nanostructure comprises of a substrate disposed on the top of the AAO template; seed/s disposed in the nano-channels/nanopores of the AAO; nanostructures that are grown from respective nano-channels to form substantially uniform distribution/near periodic structure.

Description

FIELD OF INVENTION[0001]The present invention relates to an anodized aluminum oxide template that is used to grow periodic nanostructure and method of fabrication of the said template. The invention further relates to the fabrication of the respective periodic nanostructures from diverse materials using hydrothermal and / or CVD method for growing the said nanostructure.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0002]The periodic nanostructures find use in the diverse applications is need of the hour in electronics, telecommunication, energy, sensing elements, field emission devices, wave guides, solar cells, LEDs, display, diodes etc. The periodic structure is defined as a structure that is repeated without substantial variation in dimensions and / or distance between the adjacent structures. The nano structures are in diverse forms such as nanowires, nanorods, nanotubes, nano-colloid. Furthermore morphological transformations of the nanorods are in the form of pencil-like, rods, tubular, dot, needle...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0040]Yet another object of the invention is to enable growth of the nanostructures from respective nano-channel / nano pore of the AAO membrane to achieve substantially uniform nanostructure near periodic distribution.

[0041]Yet another object of the invention is to obviate uncontrolled and undesirable growth of nanostructures from seeds from substrate.

Problems solved by technology

It is well established fact that this process is time consuming and therefore very expensive.

However, it suffers from the drawback that the superthin membrane poses problem in handling leading to limitations of scaling up the process or use of the membrane on a concentrated area (of the order of few micrometer).

However this method suffers from limitations that substantially expensive Si substrate is necessary due to its inherent characteristics such as smoothness.

This method is not capable of providing crystalline hexagonal geometry of ZnO nano-rods because the said nano-rods are oxidised after formation in the AAO.

However, there is limitation of using the thick membrane in this method.

This method can-not be used for hydrothermal growth or CVD growth of rods.

However this method suffers from drawback that it is not possible to achieve crystalline structure of the nano-rods because of the use of electrochemical deposition.

However there is limitation of this method in terms of precisely placing the seed in the nano-channels without attachment with AAO surface

The methods disclosed in the prior art suffer from following drawbacks:Dependence on specific material properties such as smoothness and crystalline structure of substrate for periodic structure formation.

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