Inexpensive and fast fabrication of ordered gold nanocone arrays

Metallic nanocones are particularly interesting recently for the electromagnetic field concentration occur near sharp tips, but the fabrication is still a problem for their application. In this paper, a simple self-assembly based templating approach was presented for the fabrication of ordered gold nanocone arrays. The double-layered silica colloidal crystal was utilized as etching masks to develop inverted tapered silicon nanopits onto silicon substrates. Gold nanocone arrays can then be replicated from silicon templates simply by sacrificial layer removing and adhesive peeling process. The resulting gold nanocone array was characterized by field emission scanning electron microscopy (SEM).