Colloidal lithography for fabricating patterned polymer-brush microstructures

• Tao Chen,
• Debby P. Chang,
• Rainer Jordan and
• Stefan Zauscher

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2012, 3, 397–403, doi:10.3762/bjnano.3.46

• : atom-transfer radical polymerization; colloidal lithography; patterning; self-assembled microsphere monolayer; Introduction It is well known that monodisperse colloidal microspheres easily self-assemble into hexagonally close-packed arrays on surfaces as a result of capillary forces arising from the

• area of the interstices on the substrate [2][4]. Micro- and nanospheres can also be used to guide the transport of molecules so that the molecular deposition forms a ring-shaped pattern around the contact point (footprint) of the microsphere with the substrate [9]. For a self-assembled microsphere

• monolayer (SMM) on a substrate, the footprint between the microsphere and substrate produces a barrier array, which can be used as a template for lithography [6][10][11]. CL thus provides a straightforward way to adjust the feature size at the microscale and, by using sufficiently small spheres, the