Facile Fabrication of Silica Glass Embedded with NiO Nanoparticles by 3D Printing Technology and its Optical Nonlinearity

Metal and metal oxide nanoparticles (NPs) embedded in glass matrixes exhibit special optical, electrical, or magnetic properties. Despite various approaches of encapsulating NPs in different kinds of glasses to prepare functional composite materials, there still exist challenges in fabricating efficiency and performance for silica glass made by traditional methods, such as sol–gel or melt quenching. Herein, the authors report a facile way to fabricate metal oxide NP‐doped silica glass by digital light processing (DLP) 3D printing technology for the first time. Different from common ion doping in silica glass, metal acetylacetonates that can be thermally decomposed to corresponding metal oxides innocuously, are chosen as a general precursor. Then, the representative nickel(II) acetylacetonate is introduced during the 3D printing process. The subsequent heat treatment generates a homogeneous distribution of NiO NPs in silica glass and it also exhibits optical nonlinear effect. The results provide a facile method for developing functional metal oxide‐doped glasses as well as the freeform fabrication of optoelectronic devices based on them. A facile way to fabricate metal oxide nanoparticles (NPs)‐doped silica glass by digital light processing (DLP) 3D printing technology is developed. The precursors of metal acetylacetonates are introduced into the intermediate of porous “brown parts” and corresponding metal oxide NPs are formed in silica glass finally, which lays a foundation for the freeform fabrication of relevant optoelectronic devices.