The applications of silica-based glass have evolved alongside human civilization for thousands of years. High-precision manufacturing of three-dimensional (3D) fused silica glass objects is required in various industries, ranging from everyday life to cutting-edge fields. Advanced 3D printing technologies have emerged as a potent tool for fabricating arbitrary glass objects with ultimate freedom and precision. Stereolithography and femtosecond laser direct writing respectively achieved their resolutions of ~50 μm and ~100 nm. However, fabricating glass structures with centimeter dimensions and sub-micron features remains challenging. Presented here, our study effectively bridges the gap through engineering suitable materials and utilizing one-photon micro-stereolithography (OμSL)-based 3D printing, which flexibly creates transparent and high-performance fused silica glass components with complex, 3D sub-micron architectures. Comprehensive characterizations confirm that the final material is stoichiometrically pure silica with high quality, defect-free morphology, and excellent optical properties. Homogeneous volumetric shrinkage further facilitates the smallest voxel, reducing the size from 2.0 × 2.0 × 1.0 μm3 to 0.8 × 0.8 × 0.5 μm3. This approach can be used to produce fused silica glass components with various 3D geometries featuring sub-micron details and millimetric dimensions. This showcases promising prospects in diverse fields, including micro-optics, microfluidics, mechanical metamaterials, and engineered surfaces.
14 January 2024 in Journal of the Franklin Institute
The rapid development of wireless technologies has led to significant electromagnetic interference (EMI), which can damage sensitive electronic equipment and cause potential biological safety issues. Conventional electromagnetic wave (EMW) absorbing materials are often hindered by a series of complicated limitations, including high density, poor impedance matching, and narrow absorption bandwidths, which limit their use in advanced applications. To overcome these challenges, this work introduces a novel biomimetic strategy inspired by the infrared‐sensing sensilla of the Melanophila acuminata beetle. We have designed a multi‐level aerogel, featuring a three‐dimensional carbon framework decorated with synergistic CeO 2 nanoparticles and Ti 3 C 2 T x MXene nanosheets. This design creates abundant heterogeneous interfaces and absorption paths and utilizes complementary loss mechanisms to achieve outstanding performance, validated by theoretical analysis. The resulting aerogel achieves a record‐breaking effective absorption bandwidth of 9.43 GHz with only 3.74 wt.% filler loading, establishing a new benchmark for lightweight, broadband electromagnetic absorption. This work presents a promising design paradigm for developing advanced EMW absorbing materials with significant potential for next‐generation stealth technologies and EMI shielding.