Dynamic nanoinscribing for continuous and seamless metal and polymer nanogratings

Nanoscale grating structure can be utilized in many practical applications in optics, flat-panel displays, and biosensors. We present a dynamic nanoinscribing (DNI) technique for directly creating large-area, truly continuous nanograting patterns in a variety of metal or polymer materials with feature size down to sub-50 nm and at very high speed (10 cm/sec). DNI is carried out under either ambient temperature or with a brief heating time on the order of 10 micros, which minimizes damage on UV or thermosensitive functional materials. We also demonstrated future applications of the DNI process into the simple, one-step fabrication of split-ring resonator (SRR) structures for negative index materials.