I have AAO membranes of 60 um thickness, for freeing them from aluminium, i use a solution of 0,1M CuCl2 and HCl 37% volume ratio 1:4 as reported in articles, but the membranes are always broken because the reaction is so violent and produces a big amount of gas. Moreover, i think the acid solution is modifying the pore features, because it gets thinner when the reaction finishes, but still i don't have SEM to characterize them. Does anybody know if the features actually change? or Is there any other solution i can use? Thanks.
I have grown AAO in a 25mm diameter of Aluminium disc and seperated it successfully from the base with intact AAO film of 25mm diameter with pore size of about 90nm. The AAO grown on Al is highly stressed due to lattice coherency; to overcome the fracture and pore modification I did the following tricks -
1. Apply a thin layer of resin onto AAO which can be removed later by simple solvent like Acetone.
2. Once the resin is solidified you put it in HCl to dissolve Al; I used a water bath to cool the acid solution during the reaction.
3. Once the reaction stopped wash the resin coated AAO several time and then dissolve it in Acetone followed by repeated washing in Acetone. It requires delicate handling!!!
Attached here is a SEM micrograph (for image analysis) of my AAO, which I did just for fun !!!
Dear Chandra, Thank you very much for your answer, is very useful. I have epoxy resin i'll try with it. Your AAO looks great!! ;)
Thanks... please note that the applied resin/epoxy should not be thick and before applying made sure that the resin/epoxy is soluble in some organic solvent.
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