Physicists accidentally learned how to fold glass microorigami

25.08.2025
Physicists accidentally learned how to fold glass microorigami

Researchers have developed a method for folding glass into microscopic three-dimensional photonic structures. Physicists have called the process photonic origami. This method can enable the creation of complex optical devices for data processing, sensorics, and experimental physics right on a chip, next to other electronic components.

Electronics and photonics are moving towards miniaturization. Reducing the scale of already working devices at a certain point leads to the fact that scientists and engineers are forced to create objects with atomic precision using high energies. Because of this, it becomes difficult or impossible to form several elements next to each other - technological processes begin to conflict, there is a risk of spoiling the finished structures when creating subsequent ones.

To prevent this from happening, different parts of photonic devices can be formed separately from each other, but this greatly complicates the production chain. Scientists are looking for a balance between precision, quality, and production speed. Even the best 3D printers produce rough three-dimensional structures that are optically inhomogeneous. This makes them unsuitable for high-precision optical systems.

Israeli physicists have found a new method for forming photonic structures — photonic origami. It allows creating structures three millimeters long and only half a micron thick using a laser. This is a record length-to-thickness ratio for three-dimensional objects. The work was published in the journal Optica.

The photonic origami method was discovered by accident when the head of the research group Tal Carmon from Tel Aviv University (Israel) asked graduate student Manya Malhotra to determine the location of an invisible laser beam on glass by increasing the laser power until it glowed. The glass not only glowed, but also folded. Thus, the scientists found a simple and unexpected way to control the shape of this material.

When one side of the glass is heated by a laser, the material becomes more liquid, and the surface tension becomes stronger than gravity. This causes a bend at the point of impact of the laser, and the glass folds into the shape desired by the scientists.

Photonic origami in action. The glowing semicircle is the movement of the end of the glass rod during folding / © Tal Carmon, Tel Aviv University (open).

The bending parameters can be adjusted with an accuracy of 0.1 microradians. Using the new approach, the researchers were able to bend glass plates up to ten microns thick into shapes ranging from right angles to spirals. During the experiments, the scientific team was also able to create concave and convex mirrors with a highly smooth surface that reflects light without distortion.

Photonic origami allowed the researchers to create an ultra-light and precise structure with a concave mirror in the shape of an inverted table. The scientists hope to use it to study deviations from Newtonian gravity on small scales. These experiments could shed light on astronomical mysteries associated with dark matter, an area of physics in which observations currently systematically contradict theoretical predictions.

The scientists say that their technology can be used to create micro-zoom lenses that can replace the individual cameras in most smartphones. It could also be used to make microphotonic components that use light instead of electricity, which would speed up the transition to faster, more energy-efficient alternatives to traditional electronics in computers.

Source: naked-science.ru

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