arXiv subjects

Göran Stemme

Publications and source records attributed to Göran Stemme.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2024

3D printing of hierarchical structures made of inorganic silicon-rich glass featuring self-forming nanogratings

Hierarchical structures are abundant in nature, such as in the superhydrophobic surfaces of lotus leaves and the structural coloration of butterfly wings. They consist of ordered features across multiple size scales, and their unique properties have attracted enormous interest in wide-ranging fields, including energy storage, nanofluidics, and nanophotonics. Femtosecond lasers, capable of inducing various material modifications, have shown promise for manufacturing tailored hierarchical structures. However, existing methods such as multiphoton lithography and 3D printing using nanoparticle-filled inks typically involve polymers and suffer from high process complexity. Here, we demonstrate 3D printing of hierarchical structures in inorganic silicon-rich glass featuring self-forming nanogratings. This approach takes advantage of our finding that femtosecond laser pulses can induce simultaneous multiphoton crosslinking and self-formation of nanogratings in hydrogen silsesquioxane (HSQ). The 3D printing process combines the 3D patterning capability of multiphoton lithography and the efficient generation of periodic structures by the self-formation of nanogratings. We 3D-printed micro-supercapacitors with large surface areas and a remarkable areal capacitance of 1 mF/cm^2 at an ultrahigh scan rate of 50 V/s, thereby demonstrating the utility of our 3D printing approach for device applications in emerging fields such as energy storage.

physics.app-ph↗

arXiv2020

Three-dimensional printing of silica-glass structures with submicrometric features

Humanity's interest in manufacturing silica-glass objects extends back over three thousand years. Silica glass is resistant to heating and exposure to many chemicals, and it is transparent in a wide wavelength range. Due to these qualities, silica glass is used for a variety of applications that shape our modern life, such as optical fibers in medicine and telecommunications. However, its chemical stability and brittleness impede the structuring of silica glass, especially on the small scale. Techniques for three-dimensional (3D) printing of silica glass, such as stereolithography and direct ink writing, have recently been demonstrated, but the achievable minimum feature size is several tens of micrometers. While submicrometric silica-glass structures have many interesting applications, for example in micro-optics, they are currently manufactured using lithography techniques, which severely limits the 3D shapes that can be realized. Here, we show 3D printing of optically transparent silica-glass structures with submicrometric features. We achieve this by cross-linking hydrogen silsesquioxane to silica glass using nonlinear absorption of laser light followed by the dissolution of the unexposed material. We print a functional microtoroid resonator with out-of-plane fiber couplers to demonstrate the new possibilities for designing and building silica-glass microdevices in 3D.

physics.app-ph↗

arXiv2018

Massively parallel fabrication of crack-defined gold break junctions featuring sub-3 nm gaps for molecular devices

Break junctions provide tip-shaped contact electrodes that are fundamental components of nano and molecular electronics. However, the fabrication of break junctions remains notoriously time-consuming and difficult to parallelize. Here we demonstrate true parallel fabrication of gold break junctions featuring sub-3 nm gaps on the wafer-scale, by relying on a novel self-breaking mechanism based on controlled crack formation in notched bridge structures. We achieve fabrication densities as high as 7 million junctions per cm$^{2}$, with fabrication yields of around 7% for obtaining crack-defined break junctions with sub-3 nm gaps of fixed gap width that exhibit electron tunneling. We also form molecular junctions using dithiol-terminated oligo(phenylene ethynylene) (OPE3) to demonstrate the feasibility of our approach for electrical probing of molecules down to liquid helium temperatures. Our technology opens a whole new range of experimental opportunities for nano and molecular electronics applications, by enabling very large-scale fabrication of solid-state break junctions.

physics.app-ph↗