Nanosphere Lithography for Structuring Polycrystalline Diamond Films

Abstract

This paper deals with the structuring of polycrystalline diamond thin films using the technique of nanosphere lithography. The presented multistep approaches relied on a spin-coated self-assembled monolayer of polystyrene spheres, which served as a lithographic mask for the further custom nanofabrication steps. Various arrays of diamond nanostructures-close-packed and non-close-packed monolayers over substrates with various levels of surface roughness, noble metal films over nanosphere arrays, ordered arrays of holes, and unordered pores-were created using reactive ion etching, chemical vapour deposition, metallization, and/or lift-off processes. The size and shape of the lithographic mask was altered using oxygen plasma etching. The periodicity of the final structure was defined by the initial diameter of the spheres. The surface morphology of the samples was characterized using scanning electron microscopy. The advantages and limitations of the fabrication technique are discussed. Finally, the potential applications (e.g., photonics, plasmonics) of the obtained nanostructures are reviewed.

Multidimensional Morphology Control for PS‐b‐P4VP Templated Mesoporous Iron (III) Oxide Thin Films

“…The influence of copolymer concentration on the micellar morphology can be tentatively explained by the equation from a theory for small‐molecule surfactant micelles. [ 25 ] …”

“…[ 22 ] Current lithographic techniques employed in the microelectronic industry face the escalating production cost by further decreasing the feature size. [ 23–25 ] As an inexpensive alternative, the block copolymer templated sol‐gel method can achieve various nanoscale structures with the assistance of self‐assembly of block copolymers. [ 2,20,26–30 ] Typically, nanopatterning of the Fe 2 O 3 NPs through block copolymer templates can be categorized into two types: directly accommodating the NPs inside the block copolymer matrix or in situ reducing block copolymer coordinated metal precursors into NPs.…”

“…The formation of thermodynamically stable block polymer micelles is mainly governed by the following three contributions: The stretching degree of the core‐forming polymer chains, the interfacial tension between the micelle core and the surrounding solvent, and the repulsive interactions among corona‐forming chains. [ 25 ] The first two contributions can be affected by factors including copolymer composition and concentration, poor solvent content in the solution, and the preferential affinity of the common solvent. [ 36 ] The third contribution mainly refers to block polymers, which contain easily ionized chains during micellization.…”

Binary Self-Assembly of Nanocolloidal Arrays using Concurrent and Sequential Spin Coating Techniques

“…With a too high volume ratio, nanospheres may overlap with one another during spin coating. Conversely, with a too low nanosphere volume, there might not be enough colloids to cover the entire substrate [ 16 ]. The spin coated substrate thus exhibited a sparse nanosphere distribution.…”

Fast Fabrication of Nanostructured Films Using Nanocolloid Lithography and UV Soft Mold Roller Embossing: Effects of Processing Parameters

“…Nanocolloid lithography [ 10 , 11 ] is a simple and inexpensive nanofabrication technique that is competent to produce various nanocolloidal structures and well-ordered two-dimensional nanofeatured arrays, which can act as a template for the embossing process. As shown schematically in Figure 1 , a flat substrate was overlaid with a suspension incorporating monodisperse nanocolloids after being chemically treated so as to promote its hydrophilicity.…”