High-Precision 3D Doping of Fused Silica Glass Derived from Nanocomposites

Glasses are utilized for their outstanding optical, mechanical, and thermal properties. However, conventional production methods mostly yield in glasses with uniform compositions and material properties. Here a novel lithographic approach is presented for high-resolution 3D dopant integration at defined positions, which enables property modifications in specific regions. For this, a porous glass matrix derived from […]

Geometric determinants of sinterless, low-temperature-processed 3D-nanoprinted glass

Glass materials are essential for microsystems applications in fields ranging from optics and photonics to microfluidics and biomedicine, which has driven growing interest in additive manufacturing—or “three-dimensional (3D) printing”—to enable glass micro/nanotechnologies. Notably, the recent discovery that 3D-nanostructured fused silica glass components can be produced via “two-photon direct laser writing (DLW)” of hybrid organic-inorganic polyhedral […]

High-Resolution Structuring of Silica-Based Nanocomposites for the Fabrication of Transparent Multicomponent Glasses with Adjustable Properties

Silicate-based multicomponent glasses are of high interest for technical applications due to their tailored properties, such as an adaptable refractive index or coefficient of thermal expansion. However, the production of complex structured parts is associated with high effort, since glass components are usually shaped from high-temperature melts with subsequent mechanical or chemical postprocessing. Here for […]

Sub-Micron Replication of Fused Silica Glass and Amorphous Metals for Tool-Based Manufacturing

The growing importance of submicrometer-structured surfaces across a variety of different fields has driven progress in light manipulation, color diversity, water-repellency, and functional enhancements. To enable mass production, processes like hot-embossing (HE), roll-to-roll replication (R2R), and injection molding (IM) are essential due to their precision and material flexibility. However, these processes are tool-based manufacturing (TBM) […]

Replicative manufacturing of metal moulds for low surface roughness polymer replication

Tool based manufacturing processes like injection moulding allow fast and high-quality mass-market production, but for optical polymer components the production of the necessary tools is time-consuming and expensive. In this paper a process to fabricate metal-inserts for tool based manufacturing with smooth surfaces via a casting and replication process from fused silica templates is presented. […]