Adhesive modification of indium–tin-oxide surface for template attachment for deposition of highly ordered nanostructure arrays

Abstract Polyvinyl alcohol (PVA), a very cheap polymer with one hydroxyl group in each repeating unit, was spun coated on the surface of an indium–tin-oxide (ITO) substrate to improve the adhesion between the substrate and a nanoporous anodic aluminum oxide (AAO) template layer for a template-directed fabrication of nanostructures. Compared with dihydroxy-terminated polystyrene (PS-dOH) and a silane coupling agent (KH550), PVA was a superior binder because of its abundant hydroxyl groups for adhesion enhancement and its low cost for applications. As an example, a highly ordered CdSe nanorod array free standing on the ITO substrate was electrochemically deposited by using an ultrathin AAO layer as the template on the PVA modified surface. It was demonstrated that the PVA modified ITO can be reliably used for the template-directed fabrication of nanostructures.