On the birefringence of porous anodic aluminum oxide

CLAUDIA ANTONIO-HERNÁNDEZ; LUISINA FORZANI; LUISA CENCHA; RAUL URTEAGA; ROBERTO KOROPECKI

La Grande Motte

Congreso; Porous Semiconductors - Science and Technology 2018; 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 the aluminum substrate used for preparation. The results suggest that the BR is due to out of the normal pore orientation. 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 explained in terms of a simple model based on preferential directions of pore formation.