Nanomaterials with a Bright Future

A new fabrication technique, known as soft interference lithography (SIL), makes it possible to inexpensively produce large sheets of gold films with virtually infinite arrays of perforations and microscale "patches" of nanoscale holes. A combination of interference lithography and soft lithography, SIL offers many significant advantages over existing techniques. It can be used to scale-up the nanomanufacturing process to produce plasmonic metamaterials and devices in large quantities. Devices such as films of nanoholes can also serve as templates to make their inverse structures, such as nanoparticles. (Legend: Si=silicon; Cr=chromium; PEEL=electron spectroscopy method called parallel electron energy loss spectroscopy.) Credit: Reprinted by permission from Macmillan Publishers Ltd: "Multiscale patterning of plasmonic metamaterials," Joel Henzie, Min Hyung Lee and Teri W. Odom, Nature Nanotechnology 2, 549 - 554 (2007)