FABRICATION, CHARACTERIZATION AND OPTICAL THEORY OF ALUMINUM NANOMETAL NANOPOROUS MEMBRANE THIN-FILM COMPOSITES

We have fabricated two kinds of aluminum nanometal/porous thin film me mbrane composites: those with cylindrical, possibly tubular, aluminum nanowires embedded in tracketch polyester host 10 mu m thick similar t o 14% porosity and with pore radius of 100 nm; and spherical aluminum nanoparticles of similar to 31 nm radius in aluminum oxide host 30 mu m thick with average pore radius of 60 nm and similar to 30% porosity. The nanoparticles were plated from a solution consisting of 2.0M AlBr 3 and 0.7M KBr in dry toluene with 2% (v/v) trimethylchlorosilane. Pla ting potentials ranged from -0.6V to -3.0V with respect to mt aluminum pseudo-reference electrode. We employed Maxwell-Garnett effective med ium theory and the dynamical size-dependent version to explain spectra l results. Preliminary optical characterization shows promise in descr ibing metal plasmon absorption maxima for the aluminum nanostructures. No samples exhibited visible region transparency due to large particl e sizes (>5 nm radius).