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Nanoprinting metasurfaces with engineered optical materials

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Abstract

Nanoprinting has emerged over the past 30 years as a powerful fabrication strategy for scalable, high-resolution optical metasurfaces made from a diverse range of materials. In this Review, we provide an overview of nanoprinting technologies for optical metasurfaces, examining how challenges are addressed in pattern fidelity, throughput and compatibility with diverse optical materials. Recent advances have extended the range of materials beyond polymers to include nanoparticle-embedded resins, sol–gel oxides, active materials and quantum dots, enabling new optical functions and reconfigurability. We also highlight how nanoprinting is driving the development of optical metasurfaces in both vertical integration and large-area parallel fabrication. Finally, we outline promising research directions, including applications in waveguides, artificial-intelligence-driven inverse design and sustainable material systems. By bridging innovation in materials science with scalable nanofabrication techniques, nanoprinting holds potential as a key enabler for next-generation flat optics.

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Fig. 1: Comparison of conventional semiconductor nanofabrication and nanoprinting for optical metasurfaces.
Fig. 2: Characteristics of printable materials for optical metasurfaces.
Fig. 3: Expandable nanoprinting techniques.
Fig. 4: Applications of nanoprinted metasurfaces.

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the POSCO-POSTECH-RIST Convergence Research Center programme funded by POSCO, the Samsung Research Funding and Incubation Center for Future Technology grant (SRFC-IT1901-52) funded by Samsung Electronics, the National Research Foundation (NRF) grants (RS-2024-00356928, RS-2024-00462912, RS-2024-00416272, RS-2024-00337012, RS-2024-00408286, RS-2022-NR067559, RS-2022-NR068141) funded by the Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT) of the Korean government, and the Korea Planning and Evaluation Institute of Industrial Technology (KEIT) grant (no. 1415179744/20019169, Alchemist project) funded by the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy (MOTIE) of the Korean government. This research was also supported by a grant of Korean ARPA-H Project through the Korea Health Industry Development Institute (KHIDI), funded by the Ministry of Health and Welfare, Republic of Korea (grant number: RS-2025-25454431). D.K.O. and H.K. acknowledge NRF PhD fellowships (RS-2024-00414891, RS-2024-00407755), respectively, funded by the Ministry of Education (MOE) of the Korean government. H.K. and J.K. acknowledge the Presidential Science fellowship funded by MSIT. J.K. acknowledges the Asan Foundation Biomedical fellowship.

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  1. These authors contributed equally: Dong Kyo Oh, Hyunjung Kang, Dohyun Kang, Joohoon Kim.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), Pohang, Republic of Korea

    Dong Kyo Oh, Hyunjung Kang, Dohyun Kang, Joohoon Kim & Junsuk Rho

  2. Department of Chemical Engineering, Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), Pohang, Republic of Korea

    Junsuk Rho

  3. Department of Electrical Engineering, Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), Pohang, Republic of Korea

    Junsuk Rho

  4. POSCO-POSTECH-RIST Convergence Research Center for Flat Optics and Metaphotonics, Pohang, Republic of Korea

    Junsuk Rho

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All authors researched data for the article, contributed substantially to discussion of the content and wrote the article. J.R. reviewed and edited the manuscript before submission.

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Oh, D.K., Kang, H., Kang, D. et al. Nanoprinting metasurfaces with engineered optical materials. Nat Rev Mater (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41578-025-00874-3

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