Dual-stage lithography from a light-driven, plasmon-assisted process: a hierarchical approach to subwavelength...

A hierarchy of lithographic-type imaging generating 3 μm lines incorporating subdiffraction limit features was obtained through a novel two-step reaction process. Photochemically generated ketyl radicals were used to make defined lines of silver nanoparticles. The excitation of nanoparticle surface plasmons was then used to generate highly localized heat that causes polymerization selectively on the surfaces of excited particles. The nylon-6 polymer that is generated serves as a solubility switch used to retain the features on the substrate selectively; various imaging techniques were used to establish the nature of the nylon shells. This work shows that the heat generated by plasmon excitation can be exploited to generate negative-type lithographic features with dimensions well below the diffraction limit.