3D nanolithography with metalens arrays and spatially adaptive illumination

The article discusses advancements in three-dimensional (3D) nanolithography using two-photon polymerization (TPL) techniques, focusing on increasing throughput and resolution for scalable fabrication. The primary innovation is the use of a metalens array to generate multiple cooperative focal spots for parallel printing, significantly enhancing throughput beyond conventional TPL methods.

Key points:

1. High-throughput Parallelization: The proposed method uses a metalens array to generate over 120,000 focal spots, enabling simultaneous polymerization across a large area with a throughput of 1.2 × 10^8 voxels/s, achieving feature sizes as small as 113 nm. This approach surpasses previous limitations in both speed and precision.

2. Adaptive Parallel Printing: The system incorporates a spatial light modulator (SLM) to control the intensity and shape of the laser, allowing for adaptive printing strategies that optimize throughput while maintaining high precision.

3. Large-scale Metamaterial Fabrication: The paper demonstrates the ability to print complex mechanical and photonic metamaterials, including those with novel microarchitectures like chainmail lattices, which exhibit improved toughness and fracture resistance.

4. Applications and Scaling: The method is scalable, with the potential to extend to wafer-scale production for use in microelectronics, biomedicine, quantum technologies, and more. The technique enables the fabrication of a wide range of functional materials and devices at unprecedented speeds and precision.

This breakthrough in metalens-based TPL addresses key challenges in scaling 3D nanofabrication, enabling high-volume production of complex structures with applications across multiple fields.