Low Power, Scalable Nanofabrication via Photon Upconversion
Abstract
Micro- and nanoscale fabrication, which enables precise construction of intricate three-dimensional structures, is of foundational importance for advancing innovation in plasmonics, nanophotonics, and biomedical applications. However, scaling fabrication to industrially relevant levels remains a significant challenge. We demonstrate that triplet-triplet annihilation upconversion (TTA-UC) offers a unique opportunity to increase fabrication speeds and scalability of micro- and nanoscale 3D structures. Due to its nonlinearity and low power requirements, TTA-UC enables localized polymerization with nanoscale resolutions while simultaneously printing millions of voxels per second through optical parallelization using off-the-shelf light-emitting diodes and digital micromirror devices. Our system design and component integration empower fabrication with a minimum lateral feature size down to 230 nm and speeds up to 112 million voxels per second at a power of 7.0 nW per voxel. This combination of high resolution and fast print speed demonstrates that TTA-UC is a significant advancement in nanofabrication technique, evidenced by the fabrication of hydrophobic nanostructures on a square-centimeter scale, paving the way for industrial nanomanufacturing.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2508.16668,
title = {Low Power, Scalable Nanofabrication via Photon Upconversion},
author = {Qi Zhou and Hao-Chi Yen and Qizhen Lan and Arynn O. Gallegos and Manchen Hu and Kyle Frohna and Hannah Niese and Da Lin and Natalia Murrietta and Pournima Narayanan and Tracy H. Schloemer and Linda Pucurimay and Sebastian Fernández and Michael Seitz and Daniel N. Congreve},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2508.16668},
year = {2025}
}