Techniques and applications for non-planar lithography

Certain classes of three dimensional nanostructures can be fabricated by contact printing patterns onto curved or non-flat surfaces. This paper reviews some of our work that demonstrates this approach by using microcontact printing to form a range of three dimensional structures with feature sizes as small as 1-2 microns and it demonstrates their use in a variety of functional devices. We also describe a nanotransfer printing technique with operational characteristics that are similar to those of microcontact printing but which enables nanometer resolution. High resolution replica molding techniques provide a method for producing copies of some of these printed structures.