Paper BI+AS+NS+SS-WeA9
Large Area Fabrication of Biological Nanostructures

Wednesday, November 2, 2011, 4:40 pm, Room 108

There has been enormous interest in the control of biological interactions at interfaces with nanometer spatial resolution, but important challenges still remain to be addressed. Of the established fabrication techniques, electron beam lithography is expensive, and requires exposure under vacuum, while scanning probe methods are slow and (with few exceptions) do not permit fabrication over large areas. In contrast, interferometric lithography (IL) is a simple approach that uses inexpensive apparatus to fabricate sub-wavelength structures over macroscopic areas. When two coherent laser beams interfere, they yield a sinusoidal pattern of intensity that may be used to modify photosensitive materials. Previously IL has been used extensively for semiconductor nanofabrication, but our recent data show that combined with self-assembled monolayer resists it provides a fast, simple method to create molecular nanostructures over macroscopic areas. Illustrations will be provided of bionanofabrication using interferometric modification of protein-resistant (oligo ethylene glycol) functionalised surfaces, where feature sizes as small as 30 nm (λ/8) have been achieved over square cm areas, and the controlled growth of protein-resistant brush structures from patterns of initiators for atom-transfer radical polymerisation. The fabrication of metallic nanostructures over macroscopic regions, including Ti structures as small as 35 nm, and gold nanostructures of controlled size and periodicity will also be demonstrated.