Fabrication of large-area metal and semiconductor nanobridge arrays using nanotransfer printing and UV lithography

A new method for the fabrication of large-area metal and semiconductor nanobridge arrays is proposed. The method combines the possibilities offered by the nanotransfer printing technique and by UV lithography. The essence of the method consists in the formation of an array of metal or semiconductor nanostrips “imprinted” into a smooth layer of resist and in subsequent exposure of the resist to UV radiation through an additional mask defining the regions where the suspended nanostrip bridges will be formed during subsequent development of the resist layer. Large-area arrays of Au and Ti/Au nanobridge, 100 nm wide, 25–35 nm thick and 1–4 μm long, with their ends embedded into the SU-8 resist layer, were fabricated. SiGe nanobridge arrays of 18 nm thick and 1 μm long, with their ends embedded into the Shipley 1813 resist layer were fabricated. The proposed method is simple and low-cost, and it does not require using expensive reactive plasma-etching facilities and can be implemented both on solid and polymer substrates on the areas at the excess of 150 cm2.