Colloidal Lithography

Dip-coating with a particulate suspension

“…For a particle-laden liquid, a supplementary length − the particle diameter d − is introduced and different rheology (Guazzelli & Pouliquen 2018) and surface conditions (Kralchevsky & Nagayama 1994) are expected. Motivated by film deposition and selfassembly of colloids for surface patterning, lithography or optical applications (Yu & Zhang 2013) much attention has been devoted to colloidal particles suspended in a volatile liquid, for which evaporation is often a dominant factor (Dimitrov & Nagayama 1996;Ghosh et al 2007;Buchanan et al 2007;Le Berre et al 2009;Faustini et al 2010;Jing et al 2010;Brewer et al 2011;Berteloot et al 2013;Jung & Ahn 2013). However, much fewer studies have considered suspensions of larger particles (∼ 100 µm) or low volatility liquids (Kao & Hosoi 2012;Colosqui et al 2013;Gans et al 2019).…”

Nanosphere Lithography for Structuring Polycrystalline Diamond Films

“…In these unorthodox cases, process steps as spin-coating of spheres on nanocrystalline diamond films, modification in linear antenna plasma (combined RF and microwave (MW) plasma) system of the PS mono-and double layers (with hcp or square arrangement), and Au evaporation were employed [25]. For multilayers (3D colloidal crystals), the upper layers act as a shadow mask for the etching of the lower layer [20,36]. In our case, a gold layer was deposited over the non-close-packed monolayers ( Figure 5, PS_1.5 μm after 2 min etching) at a normal angle (in order to achieve round holes after the lift-off process).…”

“…After the CVD diamond growth, PS spheres (with a With angle-resolved evaporation, it is possible to achieve even more complex nanostructures (rings, crescents, split-rings, asymmetric double split-rings, dimers, etc. ), which have a great potential for numerous applications (e.g., metamaterials, plasmonics, photonics, bioscience) [18,20,26,37,38].…”

“…Ordered monolayers or multilayers of submicron-sized spheres (e.g., polystyrene-PS, silicon dioxide-SiO 2 , and polymethyl methacrylate-PMMA spheres with a diameter of 200 nm to 2 µm) are the most commonly utilized particles because of their easy synthesis and processing (commercial availability, controlled reduction of diameter by plasma etching, simple lift-off) [18,19]. In the past three decades, various methods have been developed to deposit them onto the desired substrate (e.g., spin-coating, dip-coating, drag-coating, convective-coating, Langmuir-Blodgett method, template-directed assembly), all aimed at attaining high uniformity and low defect density over a large area [13,[20][21][22]. The nanosphere assembly is followed by various post-processing steps, which can be modified on demand [23].…”

“…The nanosphere assembly is followed by various post-processing steps, which can be modified on demand [23]. The most common step is plasma etching, which is used to alter the size and geometry of the spheres in the close-packed array without changing their relative placement [20,24,25]. Furthermore, deposition (e.g., metal evaporation, sputtering, pulsed laser deposition, electrochemical deposition), thermal annealing, lift-off techniques, and 3D printing are used to obtain the most common features, such as triangular, honeycomb, pyramid structures, holes, pillars, rods, rings, and cones [11,14,18,21,22,26].…”