Surface-relief micropatterning of zinc oxide substrates by micromolding pulsed-laser-deposited films

Abstract

Surface-relief patterning of semiconductor surfaces has become a very active research topic during the last few years. This growing interest is related to the wide range of technological applications of patterned semiconductor surfaces, with particular emphasis on photovoltaic technology. In this work, we show a straightforward, cost-effective and non-hard lithographic approach for transferring surface-relief micropatterns on ZnO surfaces. The method is based on direct micromolding of pulsed-laser deposited ZnO films using surface-modified metallic micromolds. In contrast to those obtained by photolithographic techniques, direct micromolded ZnO surfaces are characterized by very low roughness values on the transferred relief patterns.