Bottom-up fabrication of highly ordered metal nanostructures by hierarchical self-assembly

TL;DR

This paper presents a hierarchical self-assembly method for fabricating highly ordered metal nanostructures over large areas, offering a lithography-free alternative with high precision and potential for various advanced applications.

Contribution

It introduces a novel self-assembly process combining surface reconstruction, copolymer phase separation, and metal diffusion to create uniform nanostructures at a large scale.

Findings

Achieved highly regular metal nanostructure arrays covering square centimeters.

Demonstrated in-situ GISAXS to monitor nanostructure formation and order.

Showed potential for customizing nanostructure morphology and large-area patterning.

Abstract

In a hierarchical nanopatterning routine relying exclusively on self-assembly processes we combine crystal surface reconstruction, microphase separation of copolymers, and selective metal diffusion to produce monodisperse metal nanostructures in highly regular arrays covering areas of square centimeters. In-situ GISAXS during Fe nanostructure formation evidences the outstanding structural order in the self-assembling system and hints at possibilities of sculpting nanostructures by external process parameters. Thus, we demonstrate that nanopatterning via self-assembly is a competitive alternative to lithography-based routines, achieving comparable pattern regularity, feature size, and patterned areas with considerably reduced effort. The option for in-situ investigations during pattern formation, the possibility of customizing the nanostructure morphology, the capacity to pattern arbitrarily large areas with ultra-high structure densities, and the potential of addressing the nanostructures individually enable numerous applications, e.g., in high-density magnetic data storage, in functional nanostructured materials, e.g., for photonics or catalysis, or in sensing based on surface plasmon resonances.