Lithographic Printing Via Two-Photon Polymerization of Engineered Foams

Understanding deuterium-tritium mix in capsules is critical to achieving fusion within inertial confined fusion experiments. One method of understanding how the mix of hydrogen fuels can be controlled is by creating various structured deuterated foams and filling the capsule with liquid tritium. Historically, these materials have been a stochastically structured gas-blown foam. Later, to improve the uniformity of this material, pore formers have been used which are then chemically removed, leaving behind a foam of monodisperse voids. However, this technique is still imperfect in that fragments of the pore templating particles may not be completely removed and the void distribution may not be uniform over the size scale of the capsule. Recently, advances in three-dimensional printing suggest that it can be used to create microlattices and capsule walls in one single print. Demonstrated here are proof-of-concept microlattices produced using two-photon polymerization with submicrometer resolution of various structures as well as a microlattice-containing capsule. With this technology, complete control of the mixing structure is possible, amenable to modeling and easily modified for tailored target design.