Volumetric Additive Manufacturing of Multimaterial Glass

Additive manufacturing (AM) of glass has enabled fabrication of novel glass geometries typically not available via conventional manufacturing. Fabrication of glass structures via the direct ink-write (DIW) technique has enabled facile fabrication of glass in addition to enabling novel multimaterial gradient refractive index (GRIN) optics, thereby creating new methods for fabrication of novel optics in an otherwise difficult fabrication process. Despite these successes, fabrication of glass optics and other structures via DIW still faces hurdles related to quality due to the persistence of layer lines that decrease the optical homogeneity of glass parts while also still requiring significant post-processing to achieve optical smoothness. Other vat photopolymerization approaches have enabled fine features, but still face limitations with surface roughness and multimaterial approaches. The volumetric additive manufacturing (VAM) approach has the potential to bypass these challenges through its all-in-one fabrication approach that enables rapid fabrication of parts with comparatively much smoother surfaces. Here, we report on our work with fabrication of silica glass optics and other structures using the VAM technique. We first report on the development of a robust photopolymer resin for high fidelity glass printing in addition to associated techniques for enhancing print quality. We also report on the development of photopolymer resins with various dopants for altering the refractive index and other optical properties of printed glass. Lastly, we report on the development of a novel technique combined with the VAM approach to fabricate GRIN optics, thereby paving the path for the next generation of novel optics fabrication.<br/><br/>This work performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under Contract DE-AC52-07NA27344.