A research team led by the Chinese Academy of Sciences has developed a fabrication technique that dramatically reduces the time required to produce complex three-dimensional optical chip structures, from hours to seconds, potentially removing a major bottleneck in the global race to commercialize photonic computing.
The technique, developed by PhD student Wang Yi and colleagues from the Institute of Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in collaboration with the University of Hong Kong and other institutions, uses a broad ion beam combined with a self-folding “origami” approach to transform thousands of two-dimensional nanostructures into three-dimensional designs simultaneously.
Traditional focused ion beam (FIB) techniques create optical structures one at a time, making production a severe bottleneck for commercial-scale manufacturing. The new parallel approach processes an entire 100-millimeter (approximately 4-inch) wafer in a single operation, converting two-dimensional patterns into complex three-dimensional architectures across the full surface at once.
The results are striking. The team reported angular uniformity above 97 percent across the wafer, while fabrication time dropped by more than two orders of magnitude compared with FIB-based methods. Despite the speed increase, the technique maintains nanoscale precision suitable for photonic applications.
The advance targets next-generation three-dimensional integrated photonics for advanced computing, communications, and sensing. Moving optical structures into three dimensions allows denser chip designs, reduces signal interference, and enables functions that are difficult or impossible to achieve with planar architectures.
The manufacturing bottleneck has been one of the key challenges holding back photonic chips, which use light rather than electrical signals to process data. While several companies, including Intel, TSMC, Ayar Labs, and Lightmatter in the commercial sector, and research institutions such as Belgium’s Imec and Japan’s NTT, are racing to advance photonic technologies, production scalability has lagged behind design innovation.
The Chinese team’s breakthrough addresses this gap directly. “The technology provides a versatile platform for producing complex three-dimensional optical structures while reducing manufacturing bottlenecks,” the researchers said, positioning the method as a bridge between custom photonic designs and large-scale production.
The development comes as competition intensifies in photonic chip technology, which promises higher bandwidth and lower energy consumption than conventional electronic chips, advantages that become increasingly important as AI workloads strain existing semiconductor infrastructure.
Sources: China’s team develops faster way to manufacture complex 3D optical chips (Interesting Engineering, July 2026)