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Anodic alumina has been used widely for corrosion protection of aluminum surfaces or as a dielectric material in microelectronics applications. It exhibits a homogeneous morphology of parallel pores that can easily be controlled between 10 and 400 nm. It has been applied as a template for fabrication of the nanometerscale composite. In this study, the mechanical properties of anodic aluminum oxide (AAO) structures are measured by the nanoindentation method. The nanoindentation technique is one of the most effective methods to measure the mechanical properties of nanostructures. Using the nanoindentation method, we investigated the residual stress and mechanical properties such as the indentation modulus and hardness of the AAO structure with different-sized nanoholes. As a result, we find that the "hole effect" that changes the mechanical properties is the hole size.

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A rodlike polymer with various side chain lengths was prepared in a good quality of films. The polymer films were rubbed, and used in constructing liquid-crystal (LC) cells which were filled with a nematic LC containing a dichroic dye. For the LC cells, the ability of polymers to align LCs was evaluated, and compared to that of semi-rigid polymer containing the same type oC side chains as the rodlib polymer had.