Near-field laser parallel nanofabrication of arbitrary-shaped patterns

The authors present a simple and efficient technique for laser writing of arbitrary nanopatterns across a large surface area without using projection masks. It is based on the unique near-field focusing effect of a self-assembled particle array on the surface interacting with an angular incident laser beam. The spot resolution can be down to 80 nm. More than 6x10(6) nanolines and c-shaped uniform patterns were fabricated simultaneously over an area of 5x5 mm(2) by a few laser shots. (c) 2007 American Institute of Physics.