Advances in Contemporary Nanosphere Lithographic Techniques

Abstract

Nanosphere lithography (NSL) is an inexpensive, high throughput, materials general nanofabrication technique capable of producing a large variety of nanoscale structures including well-ordered 2 dimensional nanoparticle arrays. In this review, we will summarize the most recent advances in the fabrication of size-tunable nanoparticles using NSL. Four examples of new NSL-derived materials will be described: (1) The development of a method to release NSL nanoparticles from the substrate for applications in solution environments, (2) the fabrication of triangular nanoholes with reactive ion etching, (3) the electrochemical fine tuning of the structure of a silver nanoparticle and the wavelength of its localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR), and (4) the growth of ultra thin protective dielectric layers on NSL-fabricated Ag nanotriangles using atomic layer deposition (ALD).

Surface Patterning with Colloidal Monolayers

“…[5] First reported by Fischer and Zingsheim in 1981, [4] colloidal lithography has matured into a widely-used technology and there are a number of reviews that highlight recent advances and developments. [9][10][122][123][124] The process flow of classical colloidal lithography is illustrated in Figure 3 Several years after the first report, Richard van Duyne and his group set out to explore scope and limitations of the fabrication process and investigated the intrinsic optical properties of such nanoscale metal particles (chapter 3.5). They used different metals and varied the size and shape of metal nanoparticle and managed to produce double and triple structures by multiple evaporation steps.…”

“…They used different metals and varied the size and shape of metal nanoparticle and managed to produce double and triple structures by multiple evaporation steps. [122,[125][126] In the last decade, focused research efforts were initiated that widened accessible structures by innovative combinations of angular dependent evaporation and etching steps. Thus, nanoscale discs, [127] rings, [128] ellipsoids [11] and crescent shaped particles [129][130] were successfully prepared as well as hole-films, [74,131] nanobowls, [132] nanoneedles, [14] membranes [132] and arrays of pillars of different materials.…”

“…Second, solvent annealing, known to cause blue shifts in the resonance can at least partly be responsible for the shift detected in the first measurement cycles. [122] The blue shift may be avoided by the use of a higher quality silicon dioxide matrix (e.g. by a sputtering process) or an initial annealing step using the polyelectrolyte-free solutions.…”

Magnetic antidot to dot crossover in Co and Py nanopatterned thin films

“…A strong dependence of the magnetization reversal mechanisms on the microstructure and the presence of defects makes magnetic properties hardly controllable. Nevertheless, the astonishing development of nanofabrication techniques [5][6][7][8] in recent years has opened the door to a new strategy, the patterning of nanostructures, that allows the modification of the local magnetization distribution in a controlled way. Peculiar magnetic domain structures appear on thin film surfaces, such as quasidomains [9], or in nanostructured thin films, such as hyperdomains [10] or superdomains [11].…”

Controlled Fabrication of Noble Metal Nanomaterials via Nanosphere Lithography and Their Optical Properties

“…Recent progress in nanosphere lithography (NSL) has shown that this method provides a good template for shape-controlled fabrication of surface confined NPs (Zhang, Whitney et al 2006;Song , Zhang et al 2011), which also allows for flexible functionalization of these NPs on the clean surface (as cartooned in Figure 14A) using the routine functionalization process from equation 1 to 3. After the surface functionalization of surface confined nanoparticles fabricated by NSL, they can be dislodged into solution phase (as schemed in Figure 14B).…”