Patterned TiO2 nanostructures fabricated with a novel inorganic resist

The fabrication of nanostructures is a very intense field of research in material science over the last decades. Overcoming the limit imposed by the diffraction limit in lithography was addressed in several ways: shifting to smaller wavelength, changing radiation and using electrons or ions instead of photons or using non-conventional bottom up techniques like self-assembly. There are few studies on fabrication of ordered TiO2 nanostructures, mostly confined to non-scalable technologies, while nanostructured TiO2 is a material used in many different fields of applications. In our work we present a hybrid nano-fabrication technique based on self-assembly coupled with standard UV lithography. With this method we were able to fabricate in a single step and with the use of inexpensive equipment a 2D Nano Bowl Array of TiO2 with sub wavelength features and easily scalable pattern features. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.