FigureAsia 35 Under 35 · Science
Xiaoxing Xia
Age 34 · Ultrafast nanoscale additive manufacturing · China / United States
Co-creator of a parallel two-photon manufacturing platform exceeding 100 million voxels per second.
- Approximate age at the edition eligibility date
- 34
- Field
- Advanced manufacturing
- Country or region
- China / United States
- FigureAsia U35 Assessment
- 89.7 / 100
Profile
Career and documented record
Two-photon lithography can print intricate nanoscale structures, but its serial laser focus has kept throughput painfully low. In a 2025 Nature paper, Xiaoxing Xia and collaborators combined a metalens array with adaptive illumination to create roughly 120,000 controlled focal points in parallel.
The system reported more than 100 million voxels per second—around three orders of magnitude faster than conventional serial approaches—while retaining the resolution needed for complex microstructures. Contribution records credit Xia with co-conceiving the project, building the system and developing key algorithms.
Potential uses range from fusion targets to photonic and quantum devices. Those applications still demand material-specific qualification, but the manufacturing advance is already concrete: parallelism at a scale that changes what high-resolution additive fabrication can attempt.
FigureAsia selection
Why Xiaoxing Xia is on the list
Xia earns a high position because the result removes a fundamental throughput constraint with both optical and computational invention. The authorship record makes her personal responsibility unusually clear inside a large national-laboratory collaboration.
Verified work
The 2025–26 record
Massively parallel two-photon printing
Co-developed an adaptive metalens platform with approximately 120,000 foci.
Throughput threshold
Reported fabrication above 10^8 voxels per second, roughly a thousandfold serial-speed improvement.
System and algorithm leadership
Co-conceived the work, built the platform and developed adaptive-control algorithms.
Field context
The work in its field
High-resolution additive manufacturing has faced a trade-off between detail and volume. Massive optical parallelism changes that trade-off rather than merely tuning a serial process.
FigureAsia U35 Assessment
Assessment breakdown
89.7out of 100
Substantive 2025–2026 contribution
17.4 / 20
Co-developed an adaptive metalens platform with approximately 120,000 foci.
Verified scientific impact
13 / 15
The Nature result crosses a meaningful throughput threshold for a widely used high-resolution fabrication method.
Originality and distinction
9 / 10
The distinction lies in combining metalens-scale optical parallelism with adaptive illumination and algorithmic control.
Field influence
9.1 / 10
The contribution gives ultrafast nanoscale additive manufacturing a new method, limit or line of argument with relevance beyond one paper.
Individual agency
9.1 / 10
The paper's contribution statement assigns Xia conception, system construction and algorithm development.
Durability and trajectory
4.6 / 5
The record shows continuity at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory: this contribution belongs to a wider, sustained agenda.
Asian significance and global relevance
4.6 / 5
Chinese-born engineer working in the United States national-laboratory system.
Evidential validity and reproducibility
7.3 / 8
Measured throughput and fabricated structures support the claim; industrial economics are kept outside the result.
Advance in scientific knowledge
6.4 / 7
The experiment demonstrates that extreme parallelism can preserve useful nanoscale fabrication control.
Translational or methodological utility
4.6 / 5
The platform could expand practical fabrication of photonic, fusion and quantum microstructures.
Responsible research stewardship
4.6 / 5
The profile distinguishes demonstrated manufacturing capability from downstream device qualification.