Colloidal Transfer Printing

Many fields of research have adopted self-assembly of colloidal spheres as an easy and reliable method to produce macroscopic structures with nanoscale periodicity. The field of soft lithography in particular has used colloidal self-assembly to fabricate lithographic masks and templates. We developed a colloidal lithography method that uses the colloidal assembly directly to produce submicrometer topographic and chemical surface patterns. The method does not require any specialized equipment, making it particularly useful in biological and chemical laboratories without lithography expertise. The technique involves the curing and solvent removal of a self-assembled colloidal crystal from an inorganic surface. The result is a triangular array of polymer features with submicrometer periodicity that covers square centimeters of surface area. The feature size and spacing is easily controlled, and the features serve as reactive sites for biomolecule immobilization.