Nanosphere lithography (NSL) is an effective method to grow large-area and periodic nanostructure, which uses self-assembled polystyrene nanospheres as templates. Combining related techniques, various ordered arrays of nanoparticles, nanotubes and template structures can be prepared. Nanosphere lithography (NSL) is an inexpensive, simple to implement, inherently parallel, high throughput, materials general nanofabrication technique capable of producing an unexpectedly large variety of nanoparticle structures and well-ordered 2D nanoparticle arrays. Nanosphere lithography as a self-assembly bottom-up approach for producing periodic array of spherical particles is simple and inexpensive as compared to other lithographic methods.

NSL has also been demonstrated to be well-suited to the synthesis of size-tunable noble metal nanoparticles in the 20−1000 nm range. This characteristic of NSL has been especially valuable for investigating the fascinating richness of behavior manifested in size-dependent nanoparticle optics. Applications of nanospheres lithography include photonic crystals and surface plasmons.

Process of self-assembled nanosphere lithography

There have been intense efforts targeted at the. Although lots of variants of the process of formation of nanosphere into regular patterns include the vertical deposition method, spin coating and mere dipping. All these methods fundamentally rely on manipulation of the forces applied amongst nanospheres under precise control of ambient conditions such as temperature and pressure, together with the viscosity and evaporation rate of the fluid. These conditions could be varied in order to control the number of layers and degree of order of the assembled pattern, as well as the extent of coverage across the sample. However the vertical deposition method yields a better quality of ordered nanosphere array compared to other methods.