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The commercial use of the invention is the efficient fabrication of metallic structures on a variety of substrates, including glass slides, quartz, silicon wafers, polymer films.
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Technology The present invention describes, generally, a method of forming a patterned structure with dimensions spanning from 5 nanometers to the microscale (microns or millimeters) by means of imprint lithography in conjunction with a polymer film as a lift-off layer. The current invention describes a significant new advance in the fabrication of patterned metal structures. Metal can be deposited on a patterned sacrificial polymer layer. The polymer layer is removed by action of a solvent, leaving patterned metal structures. The initial patterning of the polymer layer can be achieved by a number of lithographic techniques. Our preferred embodiment describes the use of imprint lithographic techniques and we claim the ability to fabricate metallic nanostructures from size scales ranging from centimeters to 5 nm.