Bottom-up and top-down approach for periodic microstructures on thin oxide films by controlled photo-activated chemical processes

Micropatterned oxide films were fabricated by controlling the photo-induced processes, such as buckling driven wrinkle formation and photomigration, in the photo monomer-oxide precursor hybrid films. The photo-induced process depended on the wavelength of the illuminated light, that is to say, the penetration depth of the UV light for polymerization; a uniform illumination of 254 nm light from the incoherent black light induces the surface buckling which resulted in the self-organized formation of a long-range ordered surface wrinkle structure (bottom-up process). On the other hand, 325 nm or 365 nm illumination enables us to fabricate a microstructure by the conventional photolithography technique, such as the mask method or holographic illumination (top-down process). The simultaneous illumination of the black light (uniform, 254 nm) and the He–Cd laser (holographic, 325 nm) resulted in the formation of a 2D micropattern in which the holographic gratings are formed by the holographic illumination together with the array of dots by surface buckling. This result indicates that the present microfabrication offers an integration of the top-down and bottom-up approach to realize the simultaneous fabrication of multi-scale and complex microstructured thin oxide films for photonic applications.