Talbot displacement lithography with soft elastomeric conformal phase masks

We report a novel method to create 2D hierarchical nanopatterns with a simple PDMS scaffold made of a replica of a grating and a spacer. This technique takes advantage of the Talbot effect, creating an interference pattern a given distance from a diffraction grating. By combining a conformal soft mask made of PDMS and a spacer to separate the phase shift mask from the photoresist, we can exploit the interference pattern to imprint smaller structures than the initial grating.