Surface enhanced thermo lithography

•We used electroless deposition to fabricate clusters of silver nanoparticles.•These clusters are plasmonics devices that induce giant electromagnetic (EM) field increments.•When those EM field are absorbed by metal NPs generate severe temperature increases.•Here, we realized a thermo-lithography of a polymer assisted by bi-dimensional photonics structures.•We used a Raman set-up to transfer geometrical patterns into a layer of thermo sensitive polymer.

We used electroless deposition to fabricate clusters of silver nanoparticles (NPs) on a silicon substrate. These clusters are plasmonics devices that induce giant electromagnetic (EM) field increments. When those EM field are absorbed by the metal NPs clusters generate, in turn, severe temperature increases. Here, we used the laser radiation of a conventional Raman set-up to transfer geometrical patterns from a template of metal NPs clusters into a layer of thermo sensitive Polyphthalaldehyde (PPA) polymer. Temperature profile on the devices depends on specific arrangements of silver nanoparticles. In plane temperature variations may be controlled with (i) high nano-meter spatial precision and (ii) single Kelvin temperature resolution on varying the shape, size and spacing of metal nanostructures. This scheme can be used to generate strongly localized heat amplifications for applications in nanotechnology, surface enhanced thermo-lithography (SETL), biology and medicine (for space resolved cell ablation and treatment), nano-chemistry.

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