Fabrication of silicon nanoarrays by direct nanosphere lithography

We present the fabrication of large-scale two-dimensional periodic silicon nanoarrays using nanosphere lithography. The techniques start from a monolayer of self-assembled polystyrene (PS) spheres of 220 nm in diameter on water surface, which works as a mask to fabricate largescale periodic silicon nanoarrays by direct plasmatherm reactive ion (RIE) etching. AFM images of the nanoarrays show that the patterns of PS templates are well transferred to the Si surface. The tips stand 50-80 nm high and the lateral size is around 150 nm. The optimum fabrication conditions can be chosen via the analysis of the experimental data.