Anodic aluminum oxide with fine pore size control for selective and effective particulate matter filtering

Air pollution is widely considered as one of themost pressing environmental health issues. Particularly, atmospheric particulatematters (PM), a complexmixture of solid or liquidmatter suspended in the atmosphere, are a harmful formof air pollution due to its ability to penetrate deep into the lungs and blood streams, causing permanent damages such asDNAmutations and premature death. Therefore, porousmaterials which can effectively filter out particulatematters are highly desirable. Here, for thefirst time, we demonstrate that anodic aluminumoxidewithfine pore size control fabricated through a scalable process can serve as effective and selective filteringmaterials for different types of particulatematters (such as PM2.5, PM10). Combining selective and dramatic filtering effect, fine pore size control and a scalable process, this type of anodic aluminumoxide templates can potentially serve as a novel selective filter for different kinds of particulatematters, and a promising and complementary solution to tackle this serious environmental issue.