Nanosphere lithography: fabrication of large-area Ag nanoparticle arrays by convective self-assembly and their characterization by scanning UV-visible extinction spectroscopy.

This work employs UV-visible extinction spectroscopy as a new spectral mapping technique to characterize self-assembled polystyrene microsphere samples produced by convective self-assembly (CSA). This spectroscopic technique was successfully used to analyze the periodic particle arrays produced by the polystyrene template, yielding a detailed characterization of each sample. The CSA-prepared samples proved to be more uniform across a sample as well as more reproducible than previous sample preparation techniques. For the first time, a detailed characterization and quantitative evaluation of the entire sample has been performed by spectroscopic mapping.