Laser-Induced In-Fiber Fluid Dynamical Instabilities for Precise and Scalable Fabrication of Spherical Particles

Scalable fabrication of spherical particles at both the micro- and nanoscales is of significant importance for applications spanning optical devices, electronics, targeted drug delivery, biodevices, sensors, and cosmetics. However, current top-down and bottom-up fabrication methods are unable to provide the full spectrum of uniformly sized, well-ordered, and high-quality spheres due to their inherent restrictions. Here, a generic, scalable, and precisely controllable fabrication method is demonstrated for generating spherical particles in a full range of diameters from microscale to nanoscale. This method begins with a macroscopic composite multimaterial solid-state preform drawn into a fiber that defines precisely the initial conditions for the process. It is then followed by CO₂ laser heating to enable the transformation from a continuous fiber core into a series of homogeneous spheres via Plateau–Rayleigh capillary instability inside the fiber. This physical breakup method applies to a wide range of functional materials with different melting temperatures from 400 to 2400 K and 10 orders of difference in fiber core/cladding viscosity ratio. Furthermore, an ordered array of silicon-based whispering-gallery mode resonators with the Q factor as high as 7.1 × 10⁵ is achieved, owing to the process induced ultrasmooth surface and highly crystalline nature.