Embossed polymeric relief structures as a template for the growth of periodic inorganic microstructures

A new method is presented for the glancing angle deposition (GLAD) of inorganic micro- and nanostructures using polymeric relief structures as seeding sites. Conventional embossing processes in thermoset resins are used to produce the relief structures, which potentially facilitates large scale production array production. By utilizing GLAD to control the film deposition conditions over these arrays, we have fabricated periodic lattices (2 mum periodicity) of both silicon dioxide pillars with a thickness of 1.58 mum and oblique nickel columns of thickness 0.60 mum.