Plateau-Rayleigh instability enhanced electrohydrodynamic jet printing for direct-writing of micro/nano optical...

Scalable fabrication of high-quality micro/nanoscale spherical-cap structures is significant for applications spanning optical devices, electronics, bio-devices, and sensors. Existing top-down and bottom-up fabrication methods are often constrained by material compatibility, thereby unable to provide the full diameter spectrum of uniformly, and high-quality structures. Here, we present what we believe to be a novel approach that combines electrohydrodynamic jet printing with Plateau-Rayleigh instability (PRI-EHDP) for generic, scalable, and precisely controllable fabrication of micro/nano-optical devices. The highly tunable PRI transforms EHDP direct-written structures into self-assembled nanoscale devices, fundamentally breaking the limitation in fabricated device sizes. This method can be applied to a wide range of functional materials with 3 orders of difference in viscosity, and on diverse substrates including semiconductors, glasses, and polymer films for large-scale optical device manufacturing. As a proof-of-concept, an ordered array of whisper-gallery mode resonators based on UV-curable resins is demonstrated, achieving sensitivities of 0.142 nm/°C for temperature and 8.63 pm/mT for magnetic field detection.