Fabrication, characterization and optical theory of aluminum nanometal nanoporous membrane thin film composites

We have fabricated two kinds of aluminum nanometal/porous thin film membrane composites: those with cylindrical, possibly tubular, aluminum nanowires embedded in tracketch polyester host 10 mu m thick similar to 14% porosity and with pore radius of 100 nm; and spherical aluminum nanoparticles of similar to 31 nm radius in aluminum oxide host 30 mu m thick with average pore radius of 60 nm and similar to 30% porosity. The nanoparticles were plated from a solution consisting of 2.0M AlBr3 and 0.7M KBr in dry toluene with 2% (v/v) trimethylchlorosilane. Plating potentials ranged from -0.6V to -3.0V with respect to mt aluminum pseudo-reference electrode. We employed Maxwell-Garnett effective medium theory and the dynamical size-dependent version to explain spectral results. Preliminary optical characterization shows promise in describing metal plasmon absorption maxima for the aluminum nanostructures. No samples exhibited visible region transparency due to large particle sizes (>5 nm radius).