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Nanostructured Surfaces of Metals and Polymers by Imprinting with Nanoporous Alumina
Author(s) -
Schmid Günter,
Levering Matthias,
Sawitowski Thomas
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
zeitschrift für anorganische und allgemeine chemie
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.354
H-Index - 66
eISSN - 1521-3749
pISSN - 0044-2313
DOI - 10.1002/zaac.200600358
Subject(s) - materials science , nanoporous , polymer , overlayer , aluminium , polycarbonate , chemical engineering , wetting , composite material , nanotechnology , chemistry , engineering
Anodic oxidation of aluminium surfaces yields nanoporous films which can be applied as masks to structure various materials. Pore widths and lengths can be adjusted by the oxidation conditions. Polymers such as poly(methylmethacrylate) (PMMA), polyethylene (PE), polycarbonate (PC), poly(tetrafluoroethylene) (PTFE), silicone polyester coated surfaces as well as the metals aluminium, iron, nickel, palladium, platinum, copper, silver, zinc, and brass have successfully been nanostructured.Commercially available press devices have been applied using pressures between ca. 100 and 1000 MPa, depending on the hardness of the corresponding material. The structure of the masks is 1:1 transferred onto polymer or metal surfaces. The quality of the imprinted surfaces depends mainly on the quality of the material's surface to be imprinted, since any kind of roughness or pre‐structuring is transferred to the new surface. Optical properties of several of the nanostructured surfaces have been investigated as well as the change of the wetting behaviour of PTFE. Pillars on silver surfaces, generated by imprinting, behave like nanoparticles of appropriate size, i. e. they exhibit plasmon resonances in the UV‐vis spectra. The wavelengths depend characteristically on the size of the structure units. Imprinted glassy polymers show a different light transmission, compared with non‐imprinted surfaces. This effect can be used to improve their reflection behaviour.