, Akishima-shi, Japan) working at 5 kV. Ultraviolet–visible (UV–vis) spectra of all samples were recorded on a Perkin Elmer Lambda 20 UV/Vis Spectrometer (Perkin Elmer, Waltham, MA, USA). Finite-difference

selleck time-domain (FDTD) STAT inhibitor simulation was employed to confirm the reflection property of the nanocone arrays as fabricated in the experiments. Results and discussion Electrochemical anodization of aluminum (Al) in acidic solution to form porous alumina has been well documented [29–31]. The self-organizing mechanism typically yields nanopore arrays with a few micrometers short range hexagonal ordering [32–34]. As the process is facile and low cost, it has been widely used for assembly of nanowires and nanotubes selleck compound previously [17, 21, 25–27]. Meanwhile, Masuda et al. has reported fabrication of long-range perfect-ordered AAM with pitch less than 500 nm by texturing Al surface [35]. On the other hand, in order to

fabricate nanostructures with a wide range of geometries, much larger pitch is required for a number of applications. For example, it has been shown that when photon wavelength is comparable to pitch, it can be efficiently absorbed by the three-dimensional nanowell structure [19]. Therefore, a wide range of pitch enables efficient light-structure interaction for a broad range of wavelength. Nevertheless, perfectly ordered AAM with pitch larger than 500 nm has rarely been reported. The realization of larger pitch Staurosporine supplier was rather challenging due to the ‘breakdown’ or ‘burning’ of the oxide film caused by the catastrophic flow of electric current under higher anodization voltages [36, 37]. Recently, we have reported perfectly ordered AAM with pitch up to 2 μm for efficient photon harvesting [19, 28]. In this work, we have extended the largest pitch up to 3 μm. The detailed fabrication procedure of hexagonally

ordered porous AAM is schematically shown in Figure  1a. Briefly, an Al sheet was polished electrochemically before being imprinted using a Si mold with a hexagonally arranged array of nanopillars, followed by the first anodization with stable high voltage to get ordered anodic alumina channels. The first anodization layer was then etched away (first etch) followed by the second anodization under the same conditions; in this case, the imprinted texture on the top can be removed, leaving the naturally developed porous structure with cone-shape opening. The diameter of the nanopores on the second anodization layer can be controllably widened to desirable size, as shown in Additional file 1: Figure S1a,b. Note that since pitches of structures are larger than 1 μm, the Si imprint molds are fabricated with wafer stepper instead of electron beam lithography [35], thus the molds can be made into large size with high throughput.