A Study on Fabrication Process of Gold Microdisk Arrays by the Direct Imprinting Method Using a PET Film Mold

Abstract

In this study, an efficient nanofabrication process of metal microdisk arrays using direct imprinting was developed. This process was comprised of three steps; sputter etching on the quartz glass substrate, gold thin film deposition on an etched surface of a substrate, and transfer imprinting using a polyethylene terephthalate (PET) film mold on the Au thin film. A new idea to utilize a PET film mold for disk patterning by the nano transfer imprinting was examined. The PET film mold was prepared by thermally embossing the pillar pattern of a master mold on the PET film. The master mold was prepared from a silicon wafer. The PET film mold was used for transfer imprinting on a metal film deposited on a quartz substrate. The experimental results revealed that the PET film mold can effectively form gold micro-disk arrays on the Au film despite the PET film mold being softer than the Au film. This method can control the distribution and orientation of the nano-arrays on the disk. The plasmonic properties of the gold micro-disk arrays are studied and the absorbance spectrum exhibit depends on the distribution and orientation of gold micro-disk patterns. The nano-transfer imprinting technique is useful for fabricating metallic microdisk arrays on substrate as a plasmonic device.