A novel method using a combination of microcontact printing(μCP) technique, surface-directed condensation and surface- directed dewetting has been developed to fabricate patterned polymer films on gold substrates. These patterned polymer films can serve as resists in the argon ion etching effectively to transfer patterns into the underlying gold substrates. This method is flexible in controlling the shape and feature size of the patterns in the polymer resists by simply adjusting the concentration of polymer solution, and especially it also provides a route to sub-micrometer sized features by using an original template with micrometer sized features.
