Friday, November 07, 2014

Tailoring the Ti surface via electropolishing nanopatterning as a route to obtain highly ordered TiO 2 nanotubes

Highly ordered TiO 2 nanotubes (NTs) were synthesized by the electrochemical anodization of Ti foils subjected to electropolishing (EP) pre-treatment. We found that the Ti surface roughness plays an important role in the onset of pore nucleation in enhancing the local focusing effect of the electrical field. Additionally, EP induces the formation of dimple structures on the metal surface, which can work as a pre-pattern prior to anodization. These shallow ripples lead to a preferentially ordered pore nucleation, offering an organizational improvement of the anodic oxide NTs. We found that, depending on the EP applied potential, the roughness and the spatial period of the ripple-like structures varies from 8–2 nm and from 122–30 nm, respectively. Such tuning allowed us to focus on the influence of the initial Ti pre-surface topography features on the NTs’ length, organization, and hexagonal arrangement quality, as well as diameter and density. Our results show that an EP...

A Apolinário, C T Sousa, J Ventura, L Andrade, A M Mendes and J P Araújo

Click for full article

No comments:

Post a Comment