Hierarchical macro to nano press molding of optical glasses by using metallic glasses

The fabrication of ideal optical components is a world-wide grand challenge facing us. Benefiting from the unique thermoplastic nature, precision glass molding (PGM) is considered as a promising method for rapid and precise fabrication of optical components. The success and proliferation of such methods critically rely on the manufacturing of robust and durable master molds. Although silicon-based molds relying on photolithographic forming are facile to manufacture, they are brittle and have limited longevity when used as the molds. To address this challenge, here, we propose a hierarchical macro to nano mold preparation method based on the thermoplastic forming ability of metallic glasses (MGs), which excels in micro and nano scale fabrication. After subsequently crystallizing the as-formed MG, we demonstrate that the crystalline MG is suitable as an excellent mold for molding optical glasses with service temperature up to 600 °C. Using this ‘spawning’ process, several metallic molds including macroscopic lens arrays, microscale gratings, and nano-lens arrays were successfully prepared, respectively. The minimum feature size of the mold is 300 nm and the optimum surface roughness is 7.43 nm. Correspondingly, we prepared hierarchical optical glass components with excellent optical properties using MG as molds.