Three-dimensional printing of silica glass with sub-micrometer resolutionShow others and affiliations
2023 (English)In: Nature Communications, E-ISSN 2041-1723, Vol. 14, no 1, article id 3305Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]
Silica glass is a high-performance material used in many applications such as lenses, glassware, and fibers. However, modern additive manufacturing of micro-scale silica glass structures requires sintering of 3D-printed silica-nanoparticle-loaded composites at similar to 1200 degrees C, which causes substantial structural shrinkage and limits the choice of substrate materials. Here, 3D printing of solid silica glass with sub-micrometer resolution is demonstrated without the need of a sintering step. This is achieved by locally crosslinking hydrogen silsesquioxane to silica glass using nonlinear absorption of sub-picosecond laser pulses. The as-printed glass is optically transparent but shows a high ratio of 4-membered silicon-oxygen rings and photoluminescence. Optional annealing at 900 degrees C makes the glass indistinguishable from fused silica. The utility of the approach is demonstrated by 3D printing an optical microtoroid resonator, a luminescence source, and a suspended plate on an optical-fiber tip. This approach enables promising applications in fields such as photonics, medicine, and quantum-optics.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
NATURE PORTFOLIO , 2023. Vol. 14, no 1, article id 3305
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Other Physics Topics
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:liu:diva-195767DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-38996-3ISI: 001002780300001PubMedID: 37280208OAI: oai:DiVA.org:liu-195767DiVA, id: diva2:1775435
Note
Funding Agencies|Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research [SSF GMT14-0071, SSF ID17-055]; Digitalization and Technology Research Center of the Bundeswehr~under the project VITAL-SENSE; Sweden Taiwan Research Projects 2019 [SSF STP19-0014]; Digitalization and Technology Research Center of the Bundeswehr under the project VITAL-SENSE via German Recovery and Resilience Plan NextGenerationEU by the European Union; European Union [881603, 101046693]
2023-06-272023-06-272023-11-27