High‐Speed One‐Photon 3D Nanolithography Using Controlled Initiator Depletion and Inhibitor Transport

Additive manufacturing of sophisticated 3D nanoscale objects commonly uses femtosecond lasers to photopolymerize a light-sensitive resin using multi-photon absorption. This nonlinear process provides high accuracy and flexibility in advanced 3D fabrication; however, it typically has limited throughput and high cost. This work makes use of a one-photon-based dosage-nonlinearity to fabricate 3D nanostructures, demonstrating a cost-effective method for 3D nanolithography using a low-cost 405 nm continuous-wave diode laser. This dosage-nonlinearity is achieved by using controlled depletion of photo-initiation species in an environment containing inhibiting species. By controlling multiple competing processes, the undesired dose accumulation outside the writing voxel is stopped, and thereby this method creates a confined writing voxel in space. A multiphysics model is developed to numerically study the one-photon nonlinear photopolymerization process, which is compared with experimental results.