Microstructural, optical, and electrochemical properties of nanostructured Al thin films

In the present work, the microstructral, optical, and electrochemical properties of nanostructured Al thin films were studied. Nanostructured Al thin films were prepared on Ti/glass substrates in an e-beam evaporator by using normal and oblique-angle deposition (OAD) techniques. The X-ray diffraction (XRD) pattern showed the (111) peak for all the films regardless of the deposition angle. The crystallite size was calculated to be ∼25 nm for the sample prepared using OAD at 70 .deg. C. The surface roughness increased from 5.32 to 28.65 nm as the substrate was tilted from 0 .deg. to 80 .deg. . The highest absorbance was observed for the nanocolumn thin films grown using OAD at 70 .deg. , and the best performance was achieved for charging-discharging when the films were used as anodes for Li-ion batteries. The coulombic efficiency was observed to be > 98%.