Nanosphere Lithography at the Gas/Liquid Interface: A General Approach toward Free-Standing High-Quality Nanonets

Abstract

A general nanosphere lithography (NSL) approach toward facile fabrication of free-standing, large-area, high-quality nanonets was developed, which was based on a floating colloidal crystal monolayer (CCM) mask at the gas/liquid interface for materials deposition via interfacial reactions. The hole size, spacing, and thickness of the highly ordered nanonets, which showed interesting photonic properties, can be readily adjusted. This NSL approach at the gas/liquid interface can be easily extended to fabricate large-area ordered nanonets of various metal sulfides, metals as well as inorganic minerals. Furthermore, a variety of ordered gold nanoarrays with unusual patterns were produced by using nanonet bilayers as unique deposition masks, suggesting that the obtained transferable, high-quality nanonets can function as versatile lithographic masks to generate novel nanopatterns.