Breath figure lithography: A facile and versatile method for micropatterning.

We describe a facile method to micropattern solid substrates: breath figure lithography (BFL). A honeycomb structured gold mask was prepared by sputter-coating a micro-porous polymer film with BF arrays, and then inductively coupled plasma reactive ion etching (ICP-RIE) transferred the patterns onto silicon wafer. The large etching rate selectivity between golden mask and substrate plays an important role in the effective transfer of the patterns. The versatility of the method was demonstrated by forming micropatterns on various solid substrates with adjustable sizes. Furthermore, the micropatterns on solid substrate could be replicated by PDMS stamp. Copyright 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.