Fabrication of a well-ordered nanohole array stable at room temperature

We report on the fabrication of a new type of nanotemplate surface consisting of a hexagonally well-ordered array of one monolayer deep holes with a tunable size of about 4 nm (2) and a fixed spacing of 7 nm. The nanohole array fabrication is based on the strain-relief trigonal network formed in the 2 monolayer Ag on Pt(111) system. Removing about 0.1 ML of the Ag top layer of this surface structure, for example, by He- or Ar-ion sputtering, leads to the formation of nanoholes at specific domains of the trigonal network, which are stable at room temperature.