Fabrication of nickel nanowires using porous anodic alumina(PAA) template pulse and sawtooth wave designs

Pure Nickel nanowires have been grown in porous anodic alumina (PAA) templates in both aqueous and non aqueous media through pulse and sawtooth wave designs. Electropolishing is performed in both brytal and perchloric acid-alcohol solutions. Barrier layer thinning is performed in order to facilitate the conduction of ions to aluminum substrate during electrodeposition. Bather layer thinning is done both galvanostatically nad potentiostatically. EIS measurement was performed to study the effect of current limited anodization during bather layer thinning on PAA templates. Our pulse design in applied for the first time for electrodeposition. By using pulse.deposition in case of aqueous medium there is an excellent filling of nanowires for the templates initially prepared at 40V, as compared to the templates initially prepared at 60V and 50V. In case of DMSO particulate or veins structured nanowires are electrodeposited by using pulse wave design. Sawtooth deposition is used for the first time for electrodeposition of nanowires. In all cases triangular current reproduces triangular voltage response. In sawtooth deposition, using aqueous medium straight filling of pores is observed instead of non uniform length deposition which is the usual case with electrodeposition in aqueous solution by pulse deposition. Sawtooth wave deposition in DMSO produces particulate or tubular kind of deposition instead o uniform length nanowires. (author)