Fabrication of nanopillars by nanosphere lithography

Authors

Chin Li Cheung, University of Nebraska at LincolnFollow
R. J. Nikolic, Center for Micro and Nano Technology, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA
C. E. Reinhardt, Center for Micro and Nano Technology, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA
T. F. Wang, Directorate of Chemistry and Materials Sciences, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA

Date of this Version

March 2006

Comments

Published in Nanotechnology 17:5 (March 14, 2006), pp. 1339–1343. Copyright © 2006 IOP Publishing Ltd. Used by permission. http://stacks.iop.org/Nano/17/1339

Abstract

A low cost nanosphere lithography method for patterning and generation of semiconductor nanostructures provides a potential alternative to the conventional top-down fabrication techniques. Forests of silicon pillars of sub-500 nm diameter and with an aspect ratio up to 10 were fabricated using a combination of the nanosphere lithography and deep reactive ion etching techniques. The nanosphere etch mask coated silicon substrates were etched using oxygen plasma and a timemultiplexed “Bosch” process to produce nanopillars of different length, diameter and separation. Scanning electron microscopy data indicate that the silicon etch rates with the nanoscale etch masks decrease linearly with increasing aspect ratio of the resulting etch structures.