3D Printing is a subject that has become of high interest to engineers and stockholders alike. It holds the promise of revolutionizing manufacturing, product development and innovation, the delivery of goods, and, overall, the way we live our lives. Yet, somewhat unbeknownst to the popular audience, the technology is also making strides at the nano-scale.
To begin, 3D printers at the macro scale turn digital blueprints or designs into a reality by breaking apart the 3D design into 2D layers and then stacking these 2D layers on top of each other to make the object.
This can be analogized to the volume (3D) of a cylinder:
It is well known that the formula definite a cylinder's volume is πr^2*h, and if you break this formula down into its component parts, you see that there is πr^2 and the height. Furthermore, the equation implies that you have the area of a circle the height times to get the volume. It's as though you have CD disks - the area being one CD and the height being the number of CDs. The volume of a stack CDs would be the area of one CD times the number of CDs (this works assuming you know the height of a single CD, but in a cylinder, the height of the disk is null, thus we multiply by the height directly, not, say, the number of disks or circles).
Thus, by applying the many near-2D layers, a 3D figure is created. Furthermore, the resolution is dependent on the thickness of each layer. For example, if you have a curve (the red line below) that you are trying to recreate, but can only do so using rectangular bars, you can clearly see that the thinner the bars, the more smooth a curve you can make - the same is true in 3D Printing.
When we move to smaller scales, this resolution becomes a limiting factor, and, as a result, new innovative techniques are required to maintain high resolution and high speeds.
The Vienna University of Technology has created a new method for 3D printing that overcomes some of these limitations called two-photon lithography.
Two-photon lithography is an evolution on [one] photon lithography, which uses the property that some liquids, when exposed to certain photons, solidify. Thus, by accurately firing photons at a liquid sample (often using a laser), one is able to 'carve' a solid. After the solid is carved out, the remaining fluid is simply washed away, leaving behind only the finished product.
Two-photon lithography expands on this by using resin - a viscous fluid - doped with other molecules, which solidifies when two photos hit it at the same time. This means that two different light sources are used and the solid is formed only where those two intersect in the resin. The benefits of this are 3-fold: the precision and resolution are increased (as the area of intersection is so small), the speed is vastly increased (from millimeters per second to five meters per second), and the printing no longer has to occur layer by layer (the photons can intersect anywhere within the resin to make a solid, not just the surface, as in traditional macro-3D printing and single-photon lithography).
Thus, overall, the team created a much faster, versatile, and high-resolution 3D printing method than has existed before. The team exemplified the technology's capability through this video of the creation of a 330 x 130 x 100µm^3 size F1 race car, seen here.
This innovation is a major step forward in nanoscience because of its possible application in cell biology, immunology, nanotechnology-manufacturing, and fields that have not yet even begun to be conceived.
To find out more about two-photon lithography and this team's project, click here
To find out more about 3D printing in general and the various types of 3D printing, click here
To begin, 3D printers at the macro scale turn digital blueprints or designs into a reality by breaking apart the 3D design into 2D layers and then stacking these 2D layers on top of each other to make the object.This can be analogized to the volume (3D) of a cylinder:
It is well known that the formula definite a cylinder's volume is πr^2*h, and if you break this formula down into its component parts, you see that there is πr^2 and the height. Furthermore, the equation implies that you have the area of a circle the height times to get the volume. It's as though you have CD disks - the area being one CD and the height being the number of CDs. The volume of a stack CDs would be the area of one CD times the number of CDs (this works assuming you know the height of a single CD, but in a cylinder, the height of the disk is null, thus we multiply by the height directly, not, say, the number of disks or circles).
Thus, by applying the many near-2D layers, a 3D figure is created. Furthermore, the resolution is dependent on the thickness of each layer. For example, if you have a curve (the red line below) that you are trying to recreate, but can only do so using rectangular bars, you can clearly see that the thinner the bars, the more smooth a curve you can make - the same is true in 3D Printing.
When we move to smaller scales, this resolution becomes a limiting factor, and, as a result, new innovative techniques are required to maintain high resolution and high speeds.
The Vienna University of Technology has created a new method for 3D printing that overcomes some of these limitations called two-photon lithography.
Two-photon lithography is an evolution on [one] photon lithography, which uses the property that some liquids, when exposed to certain photons, solidify. Thus, by accurately firing photons at a liquid sample (often using a laser), one is able to 'carve' a solid. After the solid is carved out, the remaining fluid is simply washed away, leaving behind only the finished product.
Two-photon lithography expands on this by using resin - a viscous fluid - doped with other molecules, which solidifies when two photos hit it at the same time. This means that two different light sources are used and the solid is formed only where those two intersect in the resin. The benefits of this are 3-fold: the precision and resolution are increased (as the area of intersection is so small), the speed is vastly increased (from millimeters per second to five meters per second), and the printing no longer has to occur layer by layer (the photons can intersect anywhere within the resin to make a solid, not just the surface, as in traditional macro-3D printing and single-photon lithography).
This innovation is a major step forward in nanoscience because of its possible application in cell biology, immunology, nanotechnology-manufacturing, and fields that have not yet even begun to be conceived.
To find out more about two-photon lithography and this team's project, click here
To find out more about 3D printing in general and the various types of 3D printing, click here
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