Fabrication of versatile 3-D ternary nanostructures via gas-mediated metal evaporation

By combining nanosphere lithography (NSL) with metal evaporation at two different chamber pressures, ternary metallic nanostructures with 3D topography were fabricated and characterized by field emission gun scanning electron microscopy (FEG-SEM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM). The nanostructures consist of 340 nm silicon patches surrounded by a chromium mesh of varying height and gold triangular pillars with a height of 40 nm and a diameter of about 200 nm. While NSL was applied due to its ease of use, evaporation at different chamber pressures can be combined with any kind of template mask comprising convex shape to yield novel kinds of ternary nanostructures analogous to the ones presented here. The method shows to be more versatile than plasma-based deposition techniques due to avoidance of substrate charging effects and a freely adjustable chamber pressure.