Fabrication of 3D metallic micro/nanostructures by two-photon absorption

We report on the fabrication of three-dimensional gold structures by two-photon absorption (TPA) reduction of gold salt, dispersed in a polymer host. In this work we developed an efficient method that overcomes the thermal effect pointed out by the double-line obtained by TPA reduction in solid thin films. We show that optimized experimental conditions allow us to generate a metallic single wire deposition, and to fabricate regular and well-defined 3D gold microstructure embedded in a dielectric matrix. This direct 3D controlled metal photo-deposition procedure may be useful to create diffraction gratings with spectral filtering properties.