Fabrication of nanostructured polymer surfaces using colloidal lithography and spin-coating

We present an original method for fabricating nanostructured polymer surfaces exhibiting homogeneous chemistry using colloidal lithography combined with polymer spin-coating. The first step of the strategy consists of creating gold surfaces with hemisphere-like protrusions, by adhesion of negatively charged polystyrene colloidal particles onto smooth positively charged surfaces, followed by coating with a thin layer of gold. In the second step, gold substrata are spin-coated with ultrathin polystyrene films. Using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and atomic force microscopy, we show that the nanotopography of the obtained polymer surfaces can be modulated by changing three parameters, i.e., the particle diameter, the particle concentration, and the polystyrene film thickness, while keeping the surface chemistry unmodified.