title: Fabrication of polymer nanowires via maskless O2 plasma etching.
abstract: In this paper, we introduce a simple fabrication technique which can pattern high-aspect-ratio polymer nanowire structures of photoresist films by using a maskless one-step oxygen plasma etching process. When carbon-based photoresist materials on silicon substrates are etched by oxygen plasma in a metallic etching chamber, nanoparticles such as antimony, aluminum, fluorine, silicon or their compound materials are self-generated and densely occupy the photoresist polymer surface. Such self-masking effects result in the formation of high-aspect-ratio vertical nanowire arrays of the polymer in the reactive ion etching mode without the necessity of any artificial etch mask. Nanowires fabricated by this technique have a diameter of less than 50 nm and an aspect ratio greater than 20. When such nanowires are fabricated on lithographically pre-patterned photoresist films, hierarchical and hybrid nanostructures of polymer are also conveniently attained. This simple and high-throughput fabrication technique for polymer nanostructures should pave the way to a wide range of applications such as in sensors, energy storage, optical devices and microfluidics systems.
authors.affiliation: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, NJ 07030, USA.
authors.forename: Ke
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Du
authors.forename: Ishan
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Wathuthanthri
authors.forename: Yuyang
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Yong Tae
authors.initials: YT
authors.lastname: Kang
authors.forename: Chang-Hwan
authors.initials: CH
authors.lastname: Choi