On the anodic aluminium oxide refractive index of nanoporous templates

In the present study, we have determined the intrinsic refractive index of anodic aluminium oxide, which is originated by the formation of nanoporous alumina templates. Different templates have been fabricated by the conventional two-step anodization procedure in oxalic acid. Their porosities were modified by chemical wet etching allowing the tuning of their effective refractive indexes (air-filled nanopores + anodic aluminium oxide). By standard spectroscopic light transmission measurements, the effective refractive index for each different template was extracted in the VIS-NIR region. The determination of the intrinsic anodic aluminium oxide refractive index was performed by using the Maxwell-Garnett homogenization theory. The results are coincident for all the fabricated samples. The obtained refractive index (similar to 1.55) is quite lower (similar to 22%) than the commonly used Al2O3 handbook value (similar to 1.75), showing that the amorphous nature of the anodic oxide structure strongly conditions its optical properties. This difference is critical for the correct design and modeling of optical plasmonic metamaterials based on anodic aluminium oxide nanoporous templates.