Investigations of two-photon polymerization of inorganic-organic hybrid materials initiated by femtosecond Ti:sapphire laser pulses are performed. First applications of this technique for the fabrication of three-dimensional microstructures and photonic crystals in inorganic-organic hybrid polymers with a structure size down to 200 nm and a periodicity of 450 nm are discussed.

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Sol‐gel synthesis allows inorganic–organic hybrid polymer materials (ORMOCER®s) to be produced, which can be functionalized to tailor their physical and chemical properties such as refractive index or optical loss. A particular material system is discussed here, which is synthesized without addition of water and is applied in optical communications. As examples for 2D and 2.5D technology, planar waveguides, stacked waveguides, and microlenses are shown. Using two‐photon polymerization initiated by femtosecond laser pulses, arbitrary 3D structures can be made in the submicrometer range. In particular, 3D photonic crystal structures are described and discussed.

The fabrication of sub-100 nm feature sizes in large-scale three-dimensional (3D) geometries by two-photon polymerization requires a precise control of the polymeric reactions as well as of the intensity distribution of the ultrashort laser pulses. The authors, therefore, investigate the complex interplay of photoresist, processing parameters, and focusing optics. New types of inorganic– organic hybrid polymers are synthesized and characterized with respect to achievable structure sizes and their degree of crosslinking. For maintaining diffraction-limited focal conditions within the 3D processing region, a special hybrid optics is developed, where spatial and chromatic aberrations are compensated by a diffractive optical element. Feature sizes below 100 nm are demonstrated.

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