Multiphoton polymerization using optical trap assisted nanopatterning

In this letter, we show the combination of multiphoton polymerization and optical trap assisted nanopatterning (OTAN) for the additive manufacturing of structures with nanometer resolution. User-defined patterns of polymer nanostructures are deposited on a glass substrate by a 3.5 μm polystyrene sphere focusing IR femtosecond laser pulses, showing minimum feature sizes of λ/10. Feature size depends on the applied laser fluence and the bead surface spacing. A finite element model describes the intensity enhancement in the microbead focus. The results presented suggest that OTAN in combination with multiphoton processing is a viable technique for additive nanomanufacturing with sub-diffraction-limited resolution.