Enhanced photonic nanojets for submicron patterning

Photonic nanojets (PNJs) have a wide range of applications in laser processing, nanolithography, optical high-density storage, super-resolution microscopy, and other fields due to their processing capacity to overcome the diffraction limit. Herein, we control static microsphere be developed into the motion state to fabricate vector graphics nano-grooves. The microspheres roll on the substrate while the laser is kept synchronously irradiated, and the overlapping PNJ ablated craters form patterned grooves on the indium-tin oxide (ITO) substrate. Thus, PNJ has been expanded from point processing to line processing. The fabricated nano grooves have high continuity and consistency. Whereas, the precise customization of critical groove dimension can be achieved via modulation in diameter and kinetics of dielectric microshperes. Furthermore, by etching vectographs on an ITO conductive glass substrate, we demonstrated the advantages and potential of the proposed method in nanopatterning. The proposed method effectively reduces the cost and complexity of photonic nanojets applied in nanopatterning. The proposed nanopatterning methodology will play a vital role in the fabrication of semiconductor materials, sensors, microfluidic devices, surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS), biomedicine, nanoscience and nanoengineering.

Automated summary

This article introduces the application of photonic nanojets (PNJs) in nanopatterning and the method of fabricating vector graphics nano-grooves by controlling the motion state of microspheres. The critical groove dimension can be customized by modulation in diameter and kinetics of the microspheres. Furthermore, the proposed method reduces the cost and complexity of photonic nanojets applied in nanopatterning.