Lithographic nanofabrication is often limited to successive fabrication of two-dimensional layers. We present a strategy for the direct assembly of three-dimensional nanomaterials consisting of metals, semiconductors, and biomolecules arranged in virtually any three-dimensional geometry. We use hydrogels as scaffolds for volumetric deposition of materials at defined points in space. We then optically pattern these scaffolds in three dimensions, attach one or more functional materials, and then shrink and dehydrate them in a controlled way to achieve nanoscale feature sizes in a solid substrate. We demonstrate this process, Implosion Fabrication (ImpFab), by directly writing highly conductive, 3D silver nanostructures within an acrylic scaffold using a volumetric silver deposition process, achieving resolutions in the tens of nanometers and complex, non-self-supporting 3D geometries of interest for optical metamaterials.

We investigate Implosion Fabrication, a technique which prints arbitrary 3D nanostructures, as a new platform for nanophotonics. We show that optical properties of printed materials are tunable by characterizing the reflectivity of printed silver.

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