A Comparison of nanowire production methodologies: Copper electrodeposition into etched ion-track polycarbonate and porous anodised aluminium oxide templates

Abstract

Metal wires have been found to have increasing yield strengths with decreasing diameters in the sub-micron regime. Previous work in Manchester has shown that there is a universal scaling law for FCC metals. A lack of reliable method for the production of nanowires below 200nm in diameter has resulted in there being few studies of wires below this size. Electrodeposition into a template is a promising method for producing wires of sufficiently low diameter. Two templates were compared: commercially available etched ion-track polycarbonate filters (EMD Millipore Corporation, Billerica, MA, USA), and porous anodised aluminium oxide films grown by a two-stage anodising process.Electrodeposition into the polycarbonate templates was successful, with a pore filling rate of 90% achieved. However the templates were found to have a larger than specified pore diameter and a large variation in the size of the pores (970nm ± 245nm for templates specified as 800nm). This was due to overlapping pores formed during the random radiation production method. Pore angles were also found to be non-perpendicular to the template surface. Thus, the templates are not suitable for growing nanowires for mechanical testing. The alumina pores were found to have a more suitable pore size distribution and pore angle; however issues with preparing the templates for electrodeposition caused unsatisfactory deposition to occur.

Date of Award	31 Dec 2013
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	The University of Manchester
Supervisor	Brian Derby (Supervisor) & Sarah Haigh (Supervisor)