We report the detailed surface morphology control of porous anodic aluminas (PAAs) fabricated in phosphoric acid. The surface defects can be dramatically lessened by employing the second anodization process, but there are still distortions on the surface. In the second anodizing process, the electric field distribution is not regular at the beginning due to the various pore shape and size, which leads to PM surface distortion. One way to eliminate the surface morphology distortion is to burn the surface defects under higher temperature and higher anodizing voltage, and another way is to have well ordered nanopore array in oxalic acid before anodizing in phosphoric acid to restrict the electric field. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.