A problem with conventional photolithography techniques is that they cannot achieve the small size requirement of nanoholes and nanopillars, required for various nanofabrication applications, because of the wavelength limitation of the exposure light source. Other nanolithography techniques, such as electron-beam lithography, focused ion beam milling, and x-ray lithography, have the high resolution to form these nanoholes and nanopillars. However, these techniques are all very expensive or have too low a throughput to fabricate a large area of repetitive nanopatterns. A low cost nanosphere lithography method for patterning and generation of semiconductor nanostructures provides a potential alternative to conventional top-down fabrication techniques.