Contact Area Lithography (CAL): A new approach to direct formation of nanometric chemical patterns

A method, namely contact area lithography (CAL), that directly generates periodic surface chemical patterns (PSCP) at the sub- 100 nm scale is presented. The fabrication of isolated TiO₂ nanodisc arrays and the fabrication of SIO₂ nanocavity arrays using PSCPs on octadecyltrichlorosilane (OTS) self-assembled monolayer (SAM) is also demonstrated. The CAL provides excellent isolation of various inorganics resulting in nanostructure and directly generates the chemical patterns without any additional surface modification. The technique is also helpful in generating smaller size of patterns than those created by nanosphere lithography (NSL).