We report results of an attempt to create nanostructures on polyethylene terephthalate substrate using the interference lithography and plasma etching technique. Methods to create nanogrooves, nanopillars, nanofins and nanoholes have been presented. The effects of chemical and physical etching associated with plasma etching on the synthesis of nanostructures were examined in detail. Different etch rates and anisotropy as a function of plasma power and pressure were reported and explained, offering good understanding of the physics of the etching process. Ways to improve anisotropy have been suggested and experimentally verified. We show that this method can produce nanostructured substrate with wide surface coverage and good uniformity. The flexibility of this method was demonstrated in that the period and shapes of the nanopattern can be varied easily without resorting to complicated fabrication processes and machinery. Our method brings forth an easy and cost-effective way to create uniform nanostructures on a large area in a controllable fashion.

Cobalt/Palladium (Co/Pd) multilayer film and nanodisc samples were fabricated on polyethylene terephthalate (PET) substrates. The effects of surface roughness and grain size of PET substrate, the Co/Pd layer and the Au intermediate layer on the magnetic properties of these samples were investigated. We observed that the coercivity for Co/Pd films deposited directly on a smoother PET substrate is significantly smaller when compared with Co/Pd films deposited at the same time on Au buffer layer. The patterned Co/Pd nanodisc array exhibited a larger coercivity than the corresponding continuous film due to lower probability of finding nucleation sites in reduced film area.