17 Dec 2025

Metalens arrays split one femtosecond laser into more than 120,000 focal spots for parallel nanoscale 3D printing

Advanced materials and metamaterialsPhotonics and optical computingAdvanced manufacturing
AI illustration · Illustrative scene, not a photograph of the specific device or experiment.

What was demonstrated

The team split a femtosecond laser into more than 120,000 focal spots using arrays of metalenses. A spatial light modulator adjusts the intensity of each spot in real time. The spots wrote 3D structures at the same time over centimetre-scale areas, and the reported minimum feature size was 113 nm in the demonstrated structures. The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) release states that the throughput is more than a thousand times that of commercial systems. The work also printed 16 different microscopic chess openings and produced tens of millions of micro-particles per day.

Why it matters

The LLNL release frames the work as addressing speed and scale barriers in 3D nanofabrication. The paper reports parallel writing over centimetre-scale areas with features down to 113 nm, which is the basis for the claim that the platform scales beyond single-spot writing.

Caveats

  • The paper's abstract could not be read, so the throughput comparison comes from the LLNL release. The release does not state the conditions behind it. The figure is not a measure of total cost, yield or the throughput of finished components.
  • The 113 nm figure is a minimum feature size in the demonstrated structures. The sources do not show the same resolution across all materials or scales.
  • The results come from a research platform developed at a national laboratory. The sources do not show commercial availability or industrial reproducibility.
  • The publisher page redirected to a sign-in page for the fetch tool, so the stated figures have not been checked against the paper's text.

Technology profiles

Sources

  1. peer reviewed paper
    3D nanolithography with metalens arrays and spatially adaptive illumination
    Songyun Gu, Chenkai Mao, Chiara Daraio et al.. Nature, 17 Dec 2025. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-025-09842-x.
  2. university press release
    LLNL researchers break speed and scale barriers in 3D nanofabrication with new meta-optics platform
    Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, 17 Dec 2025.

Last reviewed 21 Oct 2026.