Self-assembled periodic patterns on the optical fiber tip by microsphere arrays

In this work, we report a fabrication route for self-assembling periodic patterns on optical fiber tips. The technique is based on self-assembling polystyrene microspheres at the air/water interface and on successive transferring of the monolayer colloidal crystal on the fiber tip. By applying to the fiber further treatments like particle size reduction, metal coating and sphere removal, different periodic structures are conveniently realized. The results obtained indicate that self-assembly technique affords opportunity to create on the optical fiber tip dielectric and metallic-dielectric spheres' arrays with a feature size down to a submicron scale or metallic patterns with a few hundred nanometers at low fabrication costs.