Xiaoxing Xia

Xiaoxing Xia, 34, has refined a 3D printing process to dramatically speed up manufacturing of quantum computer components and other advanced electronics, and for the mass production of nuclear-fusion fuel capsules. 

While typical 3D printers create objects by putting down thin layers of material, usually a plastic, Xia works with two-photon polymerization printers. Around for decades, they function by shooting light into a resinous material that reacts only where the light strikes it, creating hardened objects from within at miniscule size. 

The technique can print at a resolution down to about 100 nanometers, or one-thousandth the thickness of a strand of hair. “It can create beautiful structures, with very novel properties,” says Xia, like parts used in quantum computers, or new materials altogether. But because the process is so slow, two-photon polymerization has found limited use outside of experiments in the lab. “It’s like having a very-fine-tip pen,” he says. “It’s extremely hard to fill up a large space.”

To address this, Xia helped develop a meta-lens array— a tiny filter able to aim the two-photon printer at up to 100,000 focal points at once. “That translates to a 1,000-times-faster printing speed,” says Xia. And instead of printing at a size that was so small he would struggle to find his designs if he dropped them on the floor, Xia can now print objects up to an inch across. 

His work could help get us one step closer to the dream of fusion energy. Until now, the tiny, hollow fuel capsules used in inertial fusion could take months to create and load with the deuterium and tritium (DT) atoms needed for a reaction. That’s a problem because a full-scale reactor would probably burn through 500,000 or more capsules a day. Xia and his team can now print the capsules and load them with DT fuel, at low cost, in as little as a day. 

“It’s the best way to use the two-photon printing technique yet,” says Xia.