ON THE BIREFRINGENCE OF POROUS ANODIC ALUMINUM OXIDE

LUISA CENCHA; C. ANTONIO HERNANDEZ; RAÚL URTEAGA; LUISINA FORZANI; R.R. KOROPECKI

La Grande Motte

Conferencia; 11 International Conference PSST; 2018

We describe the birefringence (BR) under normal incidence on freestanding anodic aluminum oxide membranes (AAO).The BR occurs in domains having an optical thickness and principal axes depending on the crystalline orientation of thealuminum substrate used for preparation. The results suggest that the BR is due to pore orientation out of the normal.We show that there is a correlation between the optical thickness and the amplitude of the BR, having the lowest amplitude at both the smallest and largest thicknesses, with a maximum at intermediates thicknesses. This can be explainedin terms of a simple model based on preferential directions of pore formation.