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Updated: Jan 28, 2026

Fabrication of Periodic Gold Nanocup Arrays Using Colloidal Lithography
Published on: September 2, 2017
Large area metal micro-/nano-groove arrays with both structural color and anisotropic wetting fabricated by one-step
Hao Wu1, Yunlong Jiao, Chenchu Zhang
1CAS Key Laboratory of Mechanical Behavior and Design of Materials, Department of Precision Machinery and Precision Instrumentation, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, China. dongwu@ustc.edu.cn jwl@ustc.edu.cn.
Abstract:
Artificial bioinspired surfaces are attracting increasing attention because of their fascinating characteristics, such as the structural color of a butterfly wing and the anisotropic wetting of a rice leaf. However, realization of the multicolor biomimetic metal surfaces with controlled anisotropy by using a simple, inexpensive and efficient method remains a challenge. Herein, we propose a focused laser interference lithography processing method, which has sufficient energy density and high processing efficiency to directly fabricate the groove structures on the metal surface. The surface is multicolor due to the diffraction grating effect of the regular groove structures, and exhibits anisotropic wetting due to its single-direction morphology. The influence of the observation angle on the diversity of colors and the anisotropic wetting under different heights and periods of grooves have been quantitatively investigated. A variety of patterns (e.g., leaf, crab, windmill, letter and so on) can be processed on various metals (e.g., stainless steel, Ti, Ni, Cu, Fe, Zn and so on) by this focused laser interference lithography because of its excellent flexibility and wide range of suitable materials. This multi-functional metal surface has broad applications in identification code, decorative beautification, anti-counterfeiting, information storage, bionic application design and so on.
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