Fabrication of commercially viable anodic aluminum oxide membranes by anodizing commercial aluminum cooking foils

One of most significant obstacles in practical application of inorganic membranes is their very high price, compared to cheap polymeric membranes, In the present paper, an attempt to overcome high price of anodic aluminum oxide (AAO) membranes, due to relatively high price of aluminum raw material and relatively complicate and long processing procedure involved in anodization, was made by using commercial aluminum cooking foils as a raw material and by anodizing them in oxalic acid at two different voltages until through-hole pores formed up to the bottom surface. The results showed that cheap AAO membranes could be fabricated using that method if the surfaces of the aluminum cooking foils were well electro-polished. However, self-ordering of pores was more or less deteriorated due to the presence of relative large amount of impurity elements..