One-photon three-dimensional printed fused silica glass with sub-micron features.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 38538612.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-024-46929-x and PMC identifier 10973333.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
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<sup>3</sup> to 0.8 × 0.8 × 0.5 μm<sup>3</sup>. 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.