Abstract. A low cost nanosphere lithography method for patterning and generation of semiconductor nanostructures provides a potential alternative to the conventional top-down fabrication techniques. Forests of silicon pillars of sub-500 nm diameter and with an aspect ratio up to 10 were fabricated using a combination of the nanosphere lithography and deep reactive ion etching techniques. The nanosphere etch mask coated silicon substrates were etched using oxygen plasma and a time-multiplexed 'Bosch' process to produce nanopillars of different length, diameter and separation. Scanning electron microscopy data indicate that the silicon etch rates with the nanoscale etch masks decrease linearly with increasing aspect ratio of the resulting etch structures.

Print publication: Issue 5 (14 March 2006)
Received 19 November 2005, in final form 8 January 2006
Published 10 February 2006