Particle Lithography from Colloidal Self-Assembly at Liquid-Liquid Interfaces

Particle lithography has been extensively used as a robust and cost-effective method to produce large-area, close-packed arrays of nanometer scale features. Many technological applications, including biosensing, require instead non-close-packed patterns in order to avoid cross-talk between the features. We present a simple, scalable, single-step particle lithography process that employs colloidal self-assembly at liquid liquid interfaces (SALI) to fabricate regular, open particle lithography masks, where the size of the features (40 to 500 nm) and their separation can be independently controlled between 3 and 10 particle diameters. Finally we show how the process can be practically employed to produce diverse biosensing structures.