Unlocking Wafer-Scale 3D Photonic Systems With Ion-Beam-Induced Origami.

Abstract

Scalable manufacturing of three-dimensional (3D) micro-/nano-architectures with nanometric precision remains a pivotal challenge in photonics. Here, we introduce a parallel broad-beam ion beam etching (IBE) technique that decouples this fundamental trade-off, enabling the simultaneous and uniform transformation of two-dimensional (2D) patterns into well-defined 3D geometries across entire 4-inch wafers. The IBE platform achieves angular uniformity exceeding 97% and reduces fabrication time by over two orders of magnitude compared to serial focused-ion-beam (FIB) methods. Leveraging this approach, we fabricate two distinct functional devices: a chiral 3D bending metasurface with a giant experimental circular dichroism of 0.8 in the mid-infrared, and a collectively buckled plasmonic grating whose resonance is dynamically tunable over 150 nm in the visible spectrum via curvature control. This technology uniquely combines nanoscale precision with wafer-scale throughput, enabling the construction of 3D metasurfaces via meta-atom assembly and the global modulation of optical responses. Our work establishes a versatile platform that bridges the gap between design complexity and scalable manufacturing for next-generation 3D integrated photonics.