Digital 3D laser printing of solid glass

本文首次探索了激光诱导正向转移印花技术在固相玻璃数字化添加剂制造中的应用。这一工艺将使预功能化玻璃的微型器件的制造成为可能(例如，通过激光或其他方法掺杂、图案化或局部修改)。与常用的聚合物材料相比，玻璃具有优异的光学、热和机械特性，可用于光通信技术、光学传感器和微流体。玻璃将以几个微米厚的“施主”膜(二氧化硅或硼硅酸盐玻璃)的形式沉积在透明的载体基板上。在激光的帮助下，我们将尝试按照乐高原理制造微型玻璃组件。玻璃乐高积木的高度在微米范围内，宽度在几十微米之间，并排并在彼此的顶部。与经典乐高的不同之处在于，这些积木不是从储存库中取出的(在微尺度上工作时会非常困难)，但它们是从准备好的“供体”玻璃膜中切割出来的，并逐个“数字化”地(或一套一套地平行)转移到适当位置的接收板上。在相同的纳秒紫外光脉冲下，切割和转移一步完成。探讨了如何使用额外的吸收层和粘附层来解决激光玻璃加工的特殊挑战。与现有的浇注玻璃熔体的方法相比，使用该工艺可以获得明显更小的特征尺寸。由于只有中等的热负荷，玻璃砖的内部结构和在未来的应用中故意修改的功能结构被保留下来。如果这种固体玻璃部件的打印成功，就可以建立一个在玻璃中创建复杂微纳系统的工具包。由完全不同的前处理部件组成的系统可以在单一平台上组装。刻线波导和栅格以及烧蚀的纳米通道或沟槽可以组合在一起，或者掺杂玻璃可以在玻璃旁边打印植入等离子粒子。与已经建立的聚合物、浆料和金属印刷工艺相结合，这种玻璃印刷将通过激光诱导转移实现真正的多材料加工。这为混合电子/光子/等离子体电路和系统的微制造提供了一条路线。

Digital additive manufacturing of glass in the solid phase by laser induced forward transfer printing will be explored here for the first time. This process will enable the fabrication of micro devices of pre-functionalized glass (e.g. doped, patterned, or locally modified by laser based or other methods). Compared to often used polymeric materials, glass has superior optical, thermal and mechanical characteristics for use e.g. in optical communication technology, optical sensors, and microfluidics. The glass will be prepared in form of a few µm thick “donor” films (SiO2 or borosilicate glass) deposited on transparent carrier substrates. With the help of lasers we will try to build micro-sized glass components according to the „Lego“-principle. Glass Lego bricks with a height in the µm-range and a width of a few ten µm are deposited (“printed”) side by side and on top of each other. The difference to classic Lego is, that the bricks are not taken from a reservoir (which would be extremely difficult when working on the micro scale), but they are cut out of the prepared “donor” glass film and transferred “digitally” one by one (or parallelized set by set) to the suitably positioned receiver plate. Both, the cutting out and the transfer are performed in one step with the same nanosecond ultraviolet laser pulse. The use of additional absorber and adhesion layers addressing the specific challenges of laser glass processing is explored. With this process, significantly smaller feature sizes can be obtained compared to the existing method of casting a glass melt. Because of only moderate thermal load, the internal and in future applications intentionally modified functional structure of the glass bricks is preserved. If this kind of printing of solid glass parts is successful, a toolkit for creating complex micro- and nanosystems in glass can be established. Systems composed of parts with completely different pre-processing can be assembled on a single platform. Inscribed waveguides and gratings and ablated nanochannels or grooves can be combined, or doped glass can be printed aside glass with implanted plasmonic particles. In combination with the already established processes for printing polymers, pastes and metals, this glass printing will enable real multimaterial processing by laser induced transfer. This shows a route for microfabrication of mixed electronic/photonic/plasmonic circuits and systems.