Elaboration of Magnetic Nanodots by Nanosphere Lithography : a Computerized Method for Order Quantification

Nanosphere lithography (NSL) is an ideal inexpensive fabrication tool for producing regular, nearly homogenous arrays of nanoparticules with different sizes. There are many different methods for the fabrication of the latex monolayer based on electrophoresis, the controlled evaporation of a solvent from the suspension containing latex particles, spincoating etc… We focused our work on this last method. The main problem with formation of 2D latex monolayers is that there are always a high number of different structural defects such as: point defects (vacancies), line defects (dislocations) and also many disordered areas. The influence of the different spincoating parameters on the amount of defects was determined by image analysis of SEM micrographies from the different samples. FePt and Co films were deposited onto quartz substrates through the polystryrene monolayers by magnetron sputtering. The nanopsheres were removed by sonication in toluene. Post-deposition annealing treatment was performed under reductive atmosphere for the FePt nanodots in order to transform the as-deposited chemically disoredered face-centered cubic (fcc) structure into the chemically ordered face-centered tetragonal (fct) phase (L10-phase). DRX , SEM and MFM analysis were performed on the different samples