Photopatterning of reactive sites in gels enables arbitrary patterning of nanoparticles The creation of nanoscale electronics, photonics, plasmonics, and mechanically robust metamaterials will benefit from nanofabrication processes that allow a designer full control in manipulating nanomaterial precursors in a programmable and volumetric manner. Despite decades of research, it remains challenging to design nanofabrication processes that can produce complex free-form three-dimensional (3D) objects at the scale of tens of nanometers. On page 1281 of this issue, Oran et al. (1) report on the photopatterning of reactive sites into water-swollen, chemically cross-linked acrylic gels for the subsequent site-specific deposition of nanomaterials and nanoparticles. After chemical and thermal dehydration, the gel scaffold holds the nanomaterials in a distinct 3D arrangement. This process, termed implosion fabrication (ImpFab) because the scaffold of the gel effectively “implodes” upon solvent removal, provides an opportunity to fabricate centimeter-scale assemblies of nanomaterials that possess multiple functionalities.

中文翻译：

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在收缩凝胶中打印纳米材料

凝胶中反应位点的光图案化可以实现纳米颗粒的任意图案化纳米级电子学、光子学、等离子体和机械坚固的超材料的创造将受益于纳米制造过程，允许设计者以可编程和体积方式完全控制操纵纳米材料前体。尽管进行了数十年的研究，但设计能够以数十纳米的尺度生产复杂的自由形式 3D (3D) 物体的纳米制造工艺仍然具有挑战性。在本期第 1281 页上，Oran 等人。(1) 报告将反应位点光图案化成水溶胀的、化学交联的丙烯酸凝胶，用于随后的纳米材料和纳米粒子的位点特异性沉积。经过化学脱水和热脱水后，凝胶支架以独特的 3D 排列方式固定纳米材料。这个过程被称为内爆制造 (ImpFab)，因为凝胶的支架在溶剂去除后有效地“内爆”，为制造具有多种功能的纳米材料的厘米级组件提供了机会。