China and Breakthrough in Optical Chip Manufacture Just the usual morning reading off Iranian sites: China cuts optical chip manufacturing time from hours to seconds Chinese researchers have developed a new technique that reduces the manufacturing time of optical chips from hours to seconds. The team has introduced a parallel manufacturing method that can convert 2D patterns into complex 3D structures on an entire 4-inch wafer in a single process. Traditional methods are based on focused ion beam (FIB) techniques that create optical structures one by one, which is a slow and costly bottleneck. The new approach produces thousands of structures simultaneously, significantly improving manufacturing efficiency. The technology achieves angular uniformity of more than 97%, while reducing fabrication time by more than two orders of magnitude. The method uses a broad ion beam to simultaneously transform thousands of 2D nanostructures into 3D designs, combining the ion beam with a self-folding ...
