Guided immobilisation of single gold nanoparticles by chemical electron beam lithography

The fabrication of periodic arrays of single metal nanoparticles is of great current interest. In this paper we present a straightforward three-step procedure based on chemical electron beam lithography, which is capable of producing such arrays with gold nanoparticles (AuNPs). Preformed 6 nm AuNPs are immobilised on thiol patterns with a pitch of 100 nm by guided self-assembly. Afterwards, these arrays are characterised by using atomic force microscopy.