  The electrochemical growth of Au nanowires in a template of nano-porous
anodic aluminum oxide was investigated in situ by means of grazing-incidence
transmission small- and wide-angle x-ray scattering (GTSAXS and GTWAXS), x-ray
fluorescence (XRF) and 2-dimensional surface optical reflectance (2D-SOR). The
XRF and the overall intensity of the GTWAXS patterns as a function of time were
used to monitor the progress of the electrodeposition. Furthermore, we
extracted powder diffraction patterns in the direction of growth and in the
direction of confinement to follow the evolution of the direction-dependent
strain. Quite rapidly after the beginning of the electrodeposition, the strain
became tensile in the vertical direction and compressive in the horizontal
direction, which showed that the lattice deformation of the nanostructures can
be artificially varied by an appropriate choice of the deposition time. By
alternating sequences of electrodeposition to sequences of rest, we observed
fluctuations of the lattice parameter in the direction of growth, attributed to
stress caused by electromigration.. Furthermore, the porous domain size
calculated from the GTSAXS patterns was used to monitor how homogeneously the
pores were filled.
