3-D laser fabrication: enabling nano-optics for the nano-sciences

纳米科学和纳米技术定义了当今的重要趋势，这些趋势寻求利用我们制造的结构和设备变得越来越小时遇到的新物理定律。最受关注的是量子效应，它以令人惊讶但非常有用的方式极大地改变了材料的电，磁，光，机械-几乎所有-属性。光学物理学在这两种趋势中发挥着重要作用。 近场、多光子和共聚焦显微镜和激光镊子通过探测和操纵单个纳米结构打开了纳米科学的前沿，而激光光刻是一种用于大批量制造微电子芯片中纳米尺寸晶体管栅极的纳米技术。 随着这场缩小世界的竞赛的进行，光学物理学也在不断发展，面临着一系列挑战，即理解和利用比光波长小得多的纳米结构中的新光学现象。纳米光学已经成为一门新的学科，它承诺新的光学材料（光子带隙晶体，超材料，等离子体电子学）在低于传统衍射极限的尺寸下引导光或探测蛋白质分子的电子波函数，具有强大的增强光学分辨率。 为此，拟议的NSERC计划旨在发明一种新的激光光束传输手段，以促进三维纳米光学系统的制造。近场和相移技术将用于多级衍射光学元件中，以设计三维周期性干涉激光图案内的“强度缺陷”。光敏光学材料暴露于这些修改后的激光图案将看到纳米光学器件精确地嵌入在3-D周期性晶格的临界点，以实现紧凑的3-D光子晶体电路，3-D光域超材料和用于细胞蛋白质组学的纳米流体色谱传感器的纳米制造。激光全息术的这一重大扩展预示着纳米光学的强大进步，并为大批量制造-非接触式3-D纳米成型-定义了一个新的范例，对加拿大的光学，生物光子学和纳米技术行业具有重要意义。

Nanoscience and nanotechnology define significant trends today that seek to exploit the new physical laws encountered as the structures and devices we make become smaller and smaller. Most attention is on the quantum effects that dramatically alter the electrical, magnetic, optical, mechanical - virtually all - properties of materials in surprising but exceedingly useful ways. Optical physics is playing a significant role in both these trends. Near-field, multi-photon, and confocal microscopy and laser tweezers are opening the frontiers of nanoscience by probing and manipulating individual nanostructures, while laser lithography is a nanotechnology used in high-volume manufacturing of nano-size transistor gates in microelectronic chips. As this race to shrink the world goes forward, optical physics is also evolving with its own set of challenges to understand and to harness the new optical phenomena in nanostructures much smaller than the wavelength of light. Nanooptics has emerged as the new discipline that promises new optical materials (photonic bandgap crystals, metamaterials, plasmatronics) to guide light at dimensions below conventional diffraction limits or probe the electron wavefunction of protein molecules with powerfully enhanced optical resolution. To this end, the proposed NSERC program seeks to invent a new means of laser optical beam delivery that will facilitate the fabrication of 3-D nano-optical systems. Near-field and phase-shifting techniques will be exploited in multi-level diffractive optical elements to design 'intensity defects' within 3-D periodic interfering laser patterns. Photosensitive optical materials exposed to these modified laser patterns will see nanooptic devices precisely embedded at the critical points of a 3-D periodic lattice to enable the nanofabrication of compact 3-D photonic crystal circuits, 3-D optical-domain metamaterials, and nanofluidic chromatography sensors for cell proteomics. This significant extension of laser holography promises a powerful advance in nanooptics and defines a new paradigm for high-volume manufacturing - contactless 3-D nanomolding - of significance to Canada's optics, biophotonics, and nanotechnology industry.