Structural and electrochemical properties of anodic aluminum oxide based electrolyteinsulator-metal device according to the heat treatment

In this study, we fabricated the electrolyte-insulator-metal sensor on the base of Si₃N₄ film-coated AAO template with variation of the heat treatment time. The structural and electrochemical properties of AAO sensor were investigated for applications in chemical sensors. Si₃N₄ layer was uniformly coated with the thickness of about 10 nm. Alumina layer, heat-treated for 10 h, crystallized from the amorphous phase to crystalline phase of γ-Al₂O₃, and the spacing of lattice plane of the oxide layer was about 2.638 Å. The AAO sensor heat-treated for 10 h showed the good normalized C-V properties, and the set values of the capacitance and the pH sensitivity were −0.3 V and 54.1 mV/pH, respectively.