We have fabricated hydrogenated nanocrystalline silicon (nc-Si:H) artificial quantum dot (AQD) arrays on Si substrates by a low-cost and industrialized plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition technique using self-organized porous alumina membrane masks. This effective approach, by the aid of small Si (3-6nm) natural quantum dots (NQDs) in nc-Si:H, has revolutionized the fact that many reported semiconductor nanodot arrays in the literature are not real systems with quantum size effects due to the large AQDs of over 25 nm. The nc-Si:H nanodot arrays have uniform shape with standard deviation of size distribution less than 5%, and sheet densities of over 1 x 10(10) cm(-2) and 3 x 10(11) cm(-2) for the AQDs and NQDs, respectively. This proposal opens the possibility of creating semiconductor nanodevice arrays in a manner of true quantum confinement phenomena through the Si NQDs, with the uniform neSi:H AQDs the base of arrays and their spacing of good electrical insulation. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.