3D nanolithography with metalens arrays and spatially adaptive illumination
Creators
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1.
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
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2.
Stanford University
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3.
California Institute of Technology
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4.
University of North Carolina at Charlotte
Abstract
The growing demand for advanced materials, miniaturized devices and integrated microsystems calls for the reliable fabrication of complex, multiscale, three-dimensional (3D) architectures, a need increasingly addressed through light-based and laser-based processes. However, owing to the field-of-view (FOV) limitations of conventional imaging optics, existing 3D laser nanofabrication techniques face fundamental challenges in throughput, proximity error and stitching defects on the path to scaling. Here we present a scalable 3D nanofabrication platform that uses a metalens-generated focal spot array to parallelize two-photon lithography (TPL) beyond centimetre-scale write field areas. Metalenses are ideally suited for producing submicron-scale focal spots for high-throughput nanolithography, as they uniquely feature large numerical apertures (NAs), immersion media compatibility and large-scale manufacturability. We experimentally demonstrate a printing system that uses a 12-cm2 metalens array to produce more than 120,000 cooperative focal spots, corresponding to a throughput exceeding 108 voxels s−1. By programmatically patterning the focal spot array using a spatial light modulator (SLM), an adaptive parallel printing strategy is developed for precise greyscale linewidth modulation and choreographed printing of semiperiodic and fully aperiodic 3D geometries. We demonstrate parallel printing of replicated microstructures (>50 M microparticles per day), centimetre-scale 3D architectures with feature sizes down to 113 nm, and photonic and mechanical metamaterials. This work demonstrates the potential of 3D nanolithography towards wafer-scale production, showing how TPL could be used at scale for applications in microelectronics, biomedicine, quantum technology and high-energy laser targets.
Copyright and License
© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited 2025. Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
Acknowledgement
X.X. and J.A.F. acknowledge financial support from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s Lab Directed Research and Development Program (LDRD: 22-ERD-004) for funding most of the project and making the research possible. S.G. acknowledges financial support from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s Lab Directed Research and Development Program (LDRD: 25-LW-103) for supporting the final stage of the project. Work at LLNL was performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under contract DE-AC52-07NA27344. J.A.F. acknowledges further support from the Packard Foundation under grant number 2016-65132 and the National Science Foundation under award number 2103721. W.Z. and C.D. acknowledge support from the Army Research Office (MURI ARO W911NF-22-2-0109).
Contributions
These authors contributed equally: Songyun Gu, Chenkai Mao.
S.G. and X.X. designed and built the printing system and performed the printing and the characterization experiments. C.M. designed, modelled and fabricated the metalens, with help from T.M., A.A. and Y.Z. A.G.I. generated the printing toolpaths, performed mechanical testing and performed simulation for the octet and Kelvin lattices, with help from X.X. and S.G. D.T.-P. and S.S. developed the laser patterning function with help from T.U.T. and performed printing experiments. M.M.-Y. developed the photoresin with help from S.H. S.S., S.G. and X.X. developed the algorithm for printing arbitrary structures. W.C. designed and characterized the THz metamaterial. W.Z., C.D. and X.X. designed the chainmail lattice. W.Z., H.Y. and Z.Z. performed the simulation for the chainmail lattice. S.H. and C.M. modelled the proximity effect. X.X., J.A.F. and T.U.T. conceived the study. S.G. and X.X. prepared the manuscript, with revisions from all authors.
Conflict of Interest
A US patent and three US patent applications related to this work have been filed, with S.G., S.S., A.G.I., D.T.-P., T.U.T. and X.X. as co-inventors. The authors declare no other competing interests.
Data Availability
All data are available in the main text, Methods or in the Supplementary Information. Other information related to this study is available from the corresponding author on request.
Supplemental Material
This file contains Supplementary Methods, Notes, Tables 1–3, Figs. 1–13 and references.
Demonstration of the microfluidic capillary network.
Tensile experiments of the chainmail, Kelvin, and octet lattices.
LS-DEM modelling of the chainmail lattice under tension.
Extended Data Fig. 1 Metalens design and fabrication
Extended Data Fig. 2 Metalens-based TPL system
Extended Data Fig. 3 Principle of phase-to-amplitude modulation using a liquid-crystal SLM
Extended Data Fig. 4 Gallery of 3-cm 3D architectures with sub-micrometre resolution
Extended Data Fig. 5 Measurement of subdiffraction linewidths
Extended Data Fig. 6 Greyscale printing by means of SLM tuning
Extended Data Fig. 7 Structural compression and throughput scaling
Extended Data Fig. 9 Hybrid FEM model for simulating the large-scale octet and Kelvin lattices
Extended Data Fig. 10 Fabrication of large-scale THz metamaterials
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Additional details
Identifiers
- PMID
- 41407898
Related works
- Describes
- Journal Article: 41407898 (PMID)
- Journal Article: https://rdcu.be/eWzC9 (ReadCube)
Funding
- Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
- 22-ERD-004
- Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
- 25-LW-103
- United States Department of Energy
- DE-AC52-07NA27344
- David and Lucile Packard Foundation
- 2016-65132
- National Science Foundation
- 2103721
- United States Army Research Office
- W911NF-22-2-0109
Dates
- Submitted
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2025-03-20
- Accepted
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2025-10-31
- Available
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2025-12-17Version of record
Caltech Custom Metadata
- Caltech groups
- Division of Engineering and Applied Science (EAS)
- Publication Status
- Published