A Novel Fabrication Technique for Developing Metal Nanodroplet Arrays

Metal in particle form is useful in fabrication of silicon nanowires [1], superlattice nanowires [2], colloidal solutions, biomedical applications [3,4], photonics [5] and sensors [6]. Incorporation of such research into manufacturing processes requires new research in fabrication processes for scalable and reproducible low cost arrays of nanoparticles. Exploiting known metallurgical sciences, new approaches in fabrication technology are constantly approaching a goal for the fabrication of oriented arrays of nanoparticles [7,8]. At present these existing processes are not capable of wide-scale deployment and selective array fabrication. In this paper, we demonstrate a novel process for ultimately developing well-defined arrays of metal nanodroplets that can be incorporated into most microfabrication processes.