Fabrication of Porous Anodic Alumina (PAA) by High-Temperature Pulse-Anodization: Tuning the Optical Characteristics of PAA-Based DBR in the NIR-MIR Region

In this work, the influence of various electrochemical parameters on the production of porous anodic alumina (PAA)-based DBRs (distributed Bragg reflector) during high-temperature-pulse-anodization was studied. It was observed that lowering the temperature from 30 to 27 °C brings about radical changes in the optical performance of the DBRs. The multilayered PAA fabricated at 27 °C did not show optical characteristics typical for DBR. The DBR performance was further tuned at 30 °C. The current recovery (i(a)(max)) after application of subsequent U(H) pulses started to stabilize upon decreasing high (U(H)) and low (U(L)) voltage pulses, which was reflected in a smaller difference between initial and final thickness of alternating d(H) and d(L) segments (formed under U(H) and U(L), respectively) and a better DBR performance. Shortening U(H) pulse duration resulted in a progressive shift of photonic stopbands (PSBs) towards the blue part of the spectrum while keeping intensive and symmetric PSBs in the NIR-MIR range. Despite the obvious improvement of the DBR performance by modulation of electrochemical parameters, the problem regarding full control over the homogeneous formation of d(H)+d(L) pairs remains. Solving this problem will certainly lead to the production of affordable and efficient PAA-based photonic crystals with tunable photonic properties in the NIR-MIR region.