Independently addressable fields of porous anodic alumina embedded in SiO2 on Si

Fields of thin-film porous anodic alumina (PAA) are fabricated within a SiO2 support and on independently addressable underlying metal pads. The underlying metallization provides a means for unique postprocessing to be performed on the PAA fields. Customized postprocessing is demonstrated with the synthesis of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) from an embedded catalyst in the PAA, followed by selective decoration of the SWCNTs from different PAA fields with dissimilar nanoparticles. Achieving uniquely functionalized fields of PAA on a single chip provides a scalable integration platform to be used in multiplexed chemical and biological sensing or nanoelectronic devices. (c) 2008 American Institute of Physics.