Rapid fabrication of complex nanostructures using room-temperature ultrasonic nanoimprinting

Despite its advantages of scalable process and cost-effectiveness, nanoimprinting faces challenges with imprinting hard materials at low or room temperatures and with rapidly fabricating complex nanostructures. The authors report a room-temperature ultrasonic nanoimprinting technique (nanojackhammer) that concentrates ultrasonic energy at the nanoscale to shape bulk materials into nanostructures. Operating at room temperature, it enables rapid fabrication of complex multi-compositional nanostructures from virtually all solid materials, regardless of ductility, hardness, reactivity, and melting point. Atomistic simulations reveal an alternating dislocation generation and recovery mechanism that reduces imprinting force under ultrasonic cyclic loading. As a proof-of-concept, a metal-oxide-metal plasmonic nanostructure with built-in nanogap is fabricated for biosensing. This fast, scalable, and cost-effective nanotechnology enables applications in optoelectronics, biosensing, catalysis and beyond.