Origin of long-range orientational pore ordering in anodic films on aluminium

Porous anodic aluminium oxide has a long history of practical application for corrosion protection and coloring. In the last few decades a lot of hi-tech applications of this material have been found owing to the discovery of anodization conditions leading to the formation of highly ordered porous structures with a narrow pore size distribution. Here we show that in-plane orientation of the porous system in anodic films on aluminium is fully determined by the intrinsic crystallographic orientation of the Al substrate. The anisotropy of aluminium oxidation rates on a scalloped metal–oxide interface leads to reorientation of Al spikes in certain directions, which builds up an in-plane orientational order on a macroscopic scale restricted by a crystallite size. This is a unique example of the inheritance of the substrate crystal structure by an amorphous film through a size difference of three orders of magnitude.