Fabrication of sub-micron high aspect ratio diamond structures with nanoimprint lithography

Polycrystalline diamond with optical quality has been patterned using nanoimprint lithography. Nanoimprint lithography is a rather new method for fabrication of resist structures with features sizes down to at least 20 nm. The pattern used in this article is a grating with a period of 600 nm and a fill factor of 0.5. Using plasma etching the nanoimprinted grating is etched into a freestanding diamond substrate. We have accomplished the fabrication of 300 nm diamond features with a depth of about 2 mu m, which corresponds to an aspect ratio of 7. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.