We investigate the transfer of random nanostructures commonly used in thin film silicon solar cells onto inexpensive substrates, such as glass or flexible polyethylene sheets. Morphological and optical analyses of masters and replicas show the successful transfer of details with sizes much below 1 mu m. These high-quality replicas are obtained by UV nano-imprinting, avoiding the use of PDMS as an intermediate mold, which has been identified as being responsible for the lack of resolution found in previous works. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.