Large-Scale Fabrication of Shaped High Index Dielectric Nanoparticles on a Substrate and in Solution

Journal article, 2018

High index dielectric nanoparticles and metasurfaces have been proposed for many different applications, including light harvesting, sensing, and metalenses. However, widespread utilization in practice also requires large-scale fabrication methods able to produce homogeneous structures with engineered optical properties in a cost effective manner. Here, a facile fabrication method for silicon nanoparticles is presented that is scalable to 4 inch wafers and can produce a wide range of nanoparticle shapes on demand. Furthermore, it is shown that the fabricated nanoparticles can be detached from their support using a simple substrate removal technique and then transferred to colloidal suspension. The method is universal in the sense that it can be used to generate monodispersed colloidal solutions of nanoparticles of various shapes, sizes and compositions and it therefore opens up a range of new possibilities for applications, for example in nanomedicine and bionanotechnology.