We present the fabrication of lithographically defined carbon patterns and nanoribbons using a common carbon precursor, polyacrylonitrile (PAN). This method is based on nanoimprint lithography and has been demonstrated to be reliable and capable of nanofabrication over a large surface area at low cost, compared with current carbon-patterning techniques. Most interestingly, the deformation profile of the PAN during the imprinting process resulted in a distribution of aligned PAN chains within the patterns, which led to a similar anisotropic correlation of the carbon crystallites in the carbonized structures. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.