One-photon three-dimensional printed fused silica glass with sub-micron features

• Published in: Nature communications Vol. 15; no. 1; p. 2689
• Main Authors: Li, Ziyong, Jia, Yanwen, Duan, Ke, Xiao, Ran, Qiao, Jingyu, Liang, Shuyu, Wang, Shixiang, Chen, Juzheng, Wu, Hao, Lu, Yang, Wen, Xiewen
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 27.03.2024; Nature Publishing Group; Nature Portfolio
• Subjects: 132/124; 140/125; 140/133; 140/146; 142/126; 147/135; 147/143; 3-D printers; 639/166/985; 639/166/988; 639/301/1005/190; 639/301/1023/218; 639/624/1107/1109; Direct laser writing; Fused silica; Humanities and Social Sciences; Lithography; Metamaterials; Micro-optics; Microfluidics; multidisciplinary; Optical properties; Optics; Photons; Printing; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Silica; Silica glass; Three dimensional printing
• ISSN: 2041-1723; 2041-1723
• DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-46929-x

The applications of silica-based glass have evolved alongside human civilization for thousands of years. High-precision manufacturing of three-dimensional (3D) fused silica glass objects is required in various industries, ranging from everyday life to cutting-edge fields. Advanced 3D printing technologies have emerged as a potent tool for fabricating arbitrary glass objects with ultimate freedom and precision. Stereolithography and femtosecond laser direct writing respectively achieved their resolutions of ~50 μm and ~100 nm. However, fabricating glass structures with centimeter dimensions and sub-micron features remains challenging. Presented here, our study effectively bridges the gap through engineering suitable materials and utilizing one-photon micro-stereolithography (OμSL)-based 3D printing, which flexibly creates transparent and high-performance fused silica glass components with complex, 3D sub-micron architectures. Comprehensive characterizations confirm that the final material is stoichiometrically pure silica with high quality, defect-free morphology, and excellent optical properties. Homogeneous volumetric shrinkage further facilitates the smallest voxel, reducing the size from 2.0 × 2.0 × 1.0 μm 3 to 0.8 × 0.8 × 0.5 μm 3 . This approach can be used to produce fused silica glass components with various 3D geometries featuring sub-micron details and millimetric dimensions. This showcases promising prospects in diverse fields, including micro-optics, microfluidics, mechanical metamaterials, and engineered surfaces. 3D-printed glass holds great potential. However, it is challenging to control both the dimension and the resolution of the printed material. Here, authors present a one-photon 3D printing approach to produce high-performance fused silica glass with sub-micron resolution and millimetric dimensions.