Fabrication of Silicon Nanotemplate for Polymer Nanolens Array

Miniaturization of lenses has been widely researched by various scientific and engineering techniques. As a result, micro scaled lens structure could be easily achieved from various fabrication techniques; nevertheless it is still challenging to make nano scaled lenses. This paper reports a novel fabrication method of silicon nanotemplate for nanolens array. The inverse structure of nanolens array was fabricated on silicon substrate by reactive ion etching (RIE) process. This technique has a flexibility to produce different tip shapes using different pattern masks. Once the silicon nano-tip array structure is well-defined using an optimized recipe, it is followed by polymer molding to duplicate nanolens array from the template. Finally, the nanostructures formed on silicon nanotemplate and polymer replica were investigated using FE-SEM and AFM measurements. The nano scaled lens can be manufactured from the same template, also using other replication techniques such as imprinting, injection molding and so on.