- Materials
- Forms
- Reference Materials
-
Services
-
Services
-
-
Sectors
-
Supporting cutting edge research and development with advanced materials to your needs.
High performance materials for extreme conditions.
Innovative and lightweight materials with high mechanical properties and durability.
Materials used in chemical engineering from consumables to innovative solutions.
Advanced materials characterized by high electrical or insulation performance.
High quality materials for renewable energy.
Biocompatible and biodegradable materials to the highest standards.
High purity, biocompatible materials for high performance devices and applications.
High purity metals and alloys in various forms and crucibles suitable to your needs.
State of the art materials for the next generation of technologies.
High performance materials for extreme conditions.
Durable materials for corrosive environments.
Foils, disks or windows across a range of materials to facilitate your innovation.
Polymers, metal foils, and sustainable materials for your packaging needs.
Your requirements for unique products and attributes will be met across our 170,000+ product range and customization capabilities.
High-quality materials across branded products in various forms including rods, wires, and foils support space technology needs.
Highest quality materials to support your need for small-quantity specialist materials such as graphite and lithium compounds.
High purity materials to improve the reproducibility and reliability of your evaporation processes.
-
- Product Ranges
-
Resources
-
Find out our latest news.
Read our latest insights, and opinions.
Discover our Innovation Discovered podcasts on innovation, products, interesting topics, and more.
Find out how we've worked with our partners
Our latest updates on what we are doing, find out more.
Find out more about us and the great roles we have available for talented individuals. Find out more.
Take a look at our global distributors.
Explore our FAQ resource to help answer your key questions.
Gain a clearer picture of the language used in scientific study
-
- About Us
Aluminum Foil
Available Configurations
Properties common to all products in this list
| Purity | Thickness | Sides | Temper Options | Surface Finish Options | Special Variants | Other Grades Available |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 99% to 99.9999% | 0.0004mm to 25mm | 10mm to 1000mm | Annealed, Hard, Half Hard, As Rolled | Polished on both sides | Pinhole Free | 1xxx, 2xxx, 3xxx, 4xxx, 5xxx, 6xxx, 7xxxx |
Need custom configurations? Please contact our Technical Solutions team.
Key Features
Aluminum Foil is available in purity grades from 99% to 99.9999% (6N), with gauges from 0.0004 mm to 25 mm and temper options from fully annealed to hard-rolled — combining low density, high conductivity, and a naturally passivating oxide layer with a purity range that delivers measurably different material properties at each grade:
High Electrical & Thermal Conductivity
Aluminum's electrical resistivity of 2.67 µΩ·cm at 20 °C and thermal conductivity of 237 W/m·K make it one of the most efficient conductors available in foil form — properties that improve incrementally with purity as trace impurity scattering is reduced, particularly at 5N and 6N grades where residual resistance contributions become measurable.
Low Density
At 2.70 g/cm³, aluminum foil is approximately one third the density of copper foil at equivalent gauge — a property preserved across all purity grades and tempers, making it the default choice wherever mass is a constraint alongside conductivity or barrier performance.
Naturally Passivating Oxide Layer
Aluminum forms a stable, self-limiting aluminum oxide (Al₂O₃) layer on exposure to air that provides reliable corrosion resistance without surface treatment. At higher purity grades, the oxide layer becomes thinner and more chemically uniform — a property relevant to anodization quality, bonding reliability, and surface-sensitive spectroscopic measurements.
Purity-Dependent Grain Structure
At commercial purities (99–99.5%), cold-rolled foil develops an ultrafine grain structure (down to ~1.7 µm) with high hardness (~90 Hv) that provides enhanced mechanical strength and resistance to plastic deformation. At 99.99% and above, grain size increases substantially (to ~73 µm at 4N under equivalent rolling conditions), yielding a softer, more ductile foil with improved surface chemistry and lower defect density.
Low Outgassing at 5N & 6N
At 5N and 6N purity, aluminum foil exhibits low outgassing behavior under vacuum, with reduced contributions from surface-adsorbed species and bulk impurity diffusion — a property that qualifies it for use in ultra-high vacuum systems and cleanroom environments where standard-grade foil would introduce unacceptable contamination.
High Reflectivity
Aluminum foil reflects approximately 85–90% of incident visible and infrared radiation, with reflectivity increasing at higher purity grades as surface scattering from impurity sites is reduced. This property supports use in thermal management, optical assemblies, and reflective barrier applications across the purity range.
Wide Temper Range
Available in fully annealed, half-hard, hard, and as-rolled tempers — with tensile strength ranging from 50–90 MPa (soft) to 130–195 MPa (hard) and Vickers hardness from 21 to 35–48 kgf/mm² — enabling selection of mechanical properties independently of purity grade to suit downstream forming, lamination, or precision cutting operations.
Industrial Applications
Aluminum Foil is used across energy storage, nanofabrication, semiconductor processing, vacuum technology, optics, and scientific instrumentation — with grade selection matched to the purity and processing requirements of each application:
- ✦ Lithium-Ion Battery Anodes & Capacitor Electrodes
- Cold-rolled 99–99.5% foil with an ultrafine grain structure provides superior chemo-mechanical stability during lithiation, making it the preferred grade for lithium-ion battery anodes and high-volume electrolytic capacitor electrode production where resistance to cracking and plastic deformation under cycling determines service life.
- ✦ Anodic Aluminum Oxide (AAO) Nanofabrication
- 99.99% foil is used in the fabrication of anodic aluminum oxide nanotemplates for nanowire growth, nanopore membranes, and photonic structures — where reduced impurity content is essential for producing the well-ordered hexagonal pore arrays required in advanced nanofabrication and sensor development.
- ✦ Ultra-High Vacuum Systems
- 5N foil is used for chamber lining, thermal shielding, and structural components in ultra-high vacuum systems, where low outgassing behavior and compatibility with precision cleaning protocols ensure that the foil does not degrade vacuum quality or introduce contamination into sensitive experimental environments.
- ✦ MEMS Fabrication & Thin-Film Deposition
- 5N thin foils with uniform oxide layer morphology and improved mechanical performance at sub-50 µm thickness are used in MEMS device fabrication and as deposition substrates in semiconductor thin-film processing, where surface homogeneity and purity directly affect device yield and film quality.
- ✦ X-Ray Instrumentation & Synchrotron Beamline Components
- 6N foil is used for X-ray fluorescence sample mounting, beam windows, and synchrotron beamline apertures where minimal elemental background signal and tight purity control are essential to measurement accuracy — alongside cryogenic thermal studies and residual resistance ratio measurements where trace impurity scattering must be eliminated.
Mentions in Scientific Literature
Goodfellow's aluminum foil features prominently in research including but not exclusive to domains such as:
Spectroscopy & Imaging Substrates, where 99.999% pure aluminum provides a contaminant-free, conductive surface ideal for Raman, SEM, and EDX techniques
[1]
.
Microforming & Precision Manufacturing, where thin aluminum foils are shaped using blast-driven processes such as embossing, drilling, and punching to fabricate miniature parts for pharmaceutical packaging and aerospace components
[2–3]
.
Fibre-Optic Sensing, where ultra-thin foils function as acoustic transducers in Fabry–Pérot interferometer sensors, valued for their mechanical properties and surface reflectivity
[4]
.
Radiation Detection, utilising foils of varied thicknesses to selectively measure alpha particles from different isotopic decay chains
[5–6]
.
Positron Annihilation Spectroscopy & Magnetometry, serving as a reference material in lifetime spectroscopy and as disposable sample holders in high-temperature magnetometry
[7]
.
Electron Microscopy, integrated into experimental setups to evaluate the influence of beam–gas interactions on imaging resolution
[8]
.
Electromagnetic Shielding & Surface Physics, used both as a shielding coating and as a test reference to study electron emission behaviour under RF exposure in satellite applications
[9–10]
.
Across these disciplines researchers have utilised our aluminum foils as
contaminant-free spectroscopy and imaging substrates
[1]
,
precision microforming blanks for miniature aerospace and pharmaceutical components
[2–3]
,
acoustic transducer membranes in fibre-optic sensing systems
[4]
,
thickness-selective radiation detection foils
[5–6]
, and
nanofabrication templates for anodic aluminum oxide (AAO) nanowire and nanopillar growth
[7]
— applications that all benefit from aluminum's exceptional purity, conductivity, low outgassing, and uniform surface properties.
References & Citations
Click to expand
- Ofner, J., Kirschner, J., Eitenberger, E., Friedbacher, G., Kasper-Giebl, A., Lohninger, H., Eisenmenger-Sittner, C., & Lendl, B. (2017). A novel substrate for multisensor hyperspectral imaging. Journal of Microscopy, 265(3), 341–348. https://doi.org/10.1111/jmi.12506
- Patel, V. K., Kant, R., Choudhary, A., Painuly, M. P., & Bhattacharya, S. (2019). Performance characterization of Bi₂O₃/Al nano-energetics blasted micro-forming system. Defence Technology, 15(1), 98–105. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dt.2018.07.005
- Patel, V. K., Kant, R., Choudhary, A., Painuly, M. P., & Bhattacharya, S. (2019). Performance characterization of Bi₂O₃/Al nano-energetics blasted micro-forming system. Defence Technology, 15(1), 98–105. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dt.2018.07.005
- Wang, S., Lu, P., Liu, L., Liao, H., Sun, Y., Ni, W., Fu, X., Jiang, X., Liu, D., & Zhang, J. (2016). An infrasound sensor based on extrinsic fiber-optic Fabry–Perot interferometer structure. IEEE Photonics Technology Letters, 28(11), 1264–1267. https://doi.org/10.1109/LPT.2016.2538318
- Gierl, S., Meisenberg, O., Haninger, T., Wielunski, M., & Tschiersch, J. (2014). An unattended device for high-voltage sampling and passive measurement of thoron decay products. Review of Scientific Instruments, 85(2), 022103. https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4865163
- Guo, L., Schmidt, V., Meisenberg, O., Guo, Q., & Tschiersch, J. (2016). Radon and thoron progeny integrated measurement based on high-voltage sampling. Journal of Nuclear Science and Technology, 53(12), 1999–2005. https://doi.org/10.1080/00223131.2016.1179137
- Russell, H., Morton, A., & Keeble, D. J. (2019). Determination of positron annihilation lifetime spectroscopy instrument timing resolution function and source terms using standard samples. Journal of Physics: Conference Series, 1253(1), 012014. https://doi.org/10.1088/1742-6596/1253/1/012014
- Zoukel, A. (2013). Étude des phénomènes d'interaction faisceau d'électrons-gaz-matière dans un MEB à pression variable : Applications aux matériaux composites (Doctoral dissertation, Université de Lille & Mines Douai). https://theses.fr/2013LIL10161
- Wang, F., He, J., Zhao, Q., & Zhang, X. (2024). Decreased secondary electron emission from aluminum surface by a fluorocarbon–titanium composite film. ACS Omega, 9(2), 12345–12355. https://doi.org/10.1021/acsomega.4c06844
- Roupie, J. (2013). Contribution à l'étude de l'émission électronique sous impact d'électrons de basse énergie (≤1 keV) : application à l'aluminum (Doctoral dissertation, ISAE-Supaero). https://theses.fr/2013ESAE0004
Synonyms
Material Properties
| Element | Value |
|---|---|
| Atomic number | 13 |
| Crystal structure | Face centred cubic |
| Electronic structure | Ne 3s² 3p¹ |
| Valences shown | 3 |
| Atomic weight( amu ) | 26.98154 |
| Thermal neutron absorption cross-section( Barns ) | 0.232 |
| Photo-electric work function( eV ) | 4.2 |
| Atomic radius - Goldschmidt( nm ) | 0.143 |
| Ionisation potential( No./eV ) | 6/ 190 |
| Ionisation potential( No./eV ) | 2/ 18.8 |
| Ionisation potential( No./eV ) | 1/ 5.99 |
| Ionisation potential( No./eV ) | 3/ 28.4 |
| Ionisation potential( No./eV ) | 5/ 154 |
| Ionisation potential( No./eV ) | 4/ 120 |
| Element | Value |
|---|---|
| Material condition | Soft |
| Material condition | Hard |
| Poisson's ratio | 0.345 |
| Poisson's ratio | 0.345 |
| Bulk modulus( GPa ) | 75.2 |
| Bulk modulus( GPa ) | 75.2 |
| Tensile modulus( GPa ) | 70.6 |
| Tensile modulus( GPa ) | 70.6 |
| Hardness - Vickers( kgf mm⁻² ) | 21 |
| Hardness - Vickers( kgf mm⁻² ) | 35-48 |
| Tensile strength( MPa ) | 50-90 |
| Tensile strength( MPa ) | 130-195 |
| Yield strength( MPa ) | Oct-35 |
| Yield strength( MPa ) | 110-170 |
| Element | Value |
|---|---|
| Electrical resistivity( µOhmcm ) | 2.67@20°C |
| Superconductivity critical temperature( K ) | 1.175 |
| Temperature coefficient( K⁻¹ ) | 0.0045@0-100°C |
| Thermal emf against Pt (cold 0C - hot 100C)( mV ) | 0.42 |
| Element | Value |
|---|---|
| Boiling point( C ) | 2467 |
| Density( gcm⁻³ ) | 2.7@20°C |
| Element | Value |
|---|---|
| Melting point( C ) | 660.4 |
| Latent heat of evaporation( J g⁻¹ ) | 10800 |
| Latent heat of fusion( J g⁻¹ ) | 388 |
| Specific heat( J K⁻¹ kg⁻¹ ) | 900@25°C |
| Thermal conductivity( W m⁻¹ K⁻¹ ) | 237@0-100°C |
| Coefficient of thermal expansion( x10⁻⁶ K⁻¹ ) | 23.5@0-100°C |
Tolerances
| Thickness | <0.01mm | ±25% |
|---|---|---|
| Thickness | 0.01mm - 0.05mm | ±15% |
| Thickness | >0.05mm | ±10% |
| Linear dimension | <100mm | ±1mm |
| Linear dimension | >=100mm | +2 / -1% |