Ordered anodic porous alumina with large-scale periodicity was fabricated via phosphonoacetic acid anodizing. Aluminum specimens were anodized in a 0.1-0.9 M phosphonoacetic acid solution under various electrochemical operating conditions, and optimum anodizing at 205-225 V exhibited self-ordering growth of the porous alumina. These self-ordering voltages during phosphonoacetic acid anodizing filled an undiscovered vacant region in the linear relationship between the self-ordering voltage and the cell diameter. The nanostructured aluminum surface formed via self-ordering phosphonoacetic acid anodizing produced a bright structural coloration with a visible light wavelength of 500-700 nm, which is useful for optical nanoapplications. 漏 The Author(s) 2015. Published by ECS. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives 4.0 License (CC BY-NC-ND, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is not changed in any way and is properly cited. For permission for commercial reuse, please email: oa@electrochem.org. [DOI: 10.1149/2.0021508ssl] All rights reserved. Self-ordered anodic porous alumina possesses a well-defined periodic porous structure with numerous nanopores that have high aspect ratios. [1][2][3] This characteristic nanoporous material is widely used for various novel nanoapplications, including electronic, optical, and sensing devices. [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12] Ordered porous alumina can be fabricated by electrochemical anodizing in several acidic electrolyte solutions under appropriate experimental conditions such as concentration and applied voltage. The periodical size of the obtained ordered porous alumina, defined as the "cell size" or "interpore distance", is typically determined by the electrolyte species used.2,3,13 In self-ordered anodizing, the regularity of the pore arrangement in the porous structure can be accurately determined by a quantitative analysis based on Fourier transformation.14-19 Sulfuric, oxalic, and phosphoric acids were found early and have been commonly used as the standard self-ordering electrolytes to date. 13,20,21 However, the cell size of these ordered porous alumina is limited to the following narrow nanometer-scale regions: 50-60 nm in sulfuric acid, 100 nm in oxalic acid, and 405-500 nm in phosphoric acid.13 Therefore, the identification of novel electrolytes for self-ordered porous alumina with different cell sizes has been a recent challenge to extensively expand the nano-periodicity. Additional dicarboxylic acids with a large molecular structure, malonic and tartaric acids, for the fabrication of anodic porous alumina were reported by Ono et al., and self-ordering was achieved by anodizing with these acids for 300 and 500 nm intervals, respectively. Particularly, etidronic acid anodizing exhibited large-scale self-ordering behavior measuring 530-670 nm in cell diameter. Eti...