Researchers have developed a new shrinking technique that enables the creation of tiny 3D photonic devices capable of manipulating visible light. The method, named implosion carving (ImpCarv), creates vacancies within a material before shrinking it to nearly 1/2,000 of its original volume, producing nanoscale structures with highly detailed features.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) team fabricated devices in various complex shapes, including helices and butterfly wing-inspired designs. The breakthrough could support future optical computing systems and other technologies that rely on controlling light at extremely small scales. “We envision ImpCarv as a scalable and cost-effective platform for fabricating nanoprecise 3D metastructures,” said the team in their research paper.
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