When two-photon absorption pushes the boundaries of 3D printing

Additive manufacturing techniques using 3D printing are now essential tools in mechanical engineering, especially for prototyping or manufacturing of small series. Among these techniques, stereolithography by resin photopolymerization continue to be the objet of research endeavours. The use of a two-photon excitation as a light source to polymerize the resin constitutes one of the most interesting ways to reach resolutions of the order of a hundred nanometers. It has been the objetc of a recent technical note in the french magazine “Industrie et Technologie”, by members of the Functional Materials and Photonics axis. The authors present the technique, detail its advantages, but also its intrinsic drawbacks, particularly with regard to the accessible writing throughput. In conclusion, the authors address the possible remediation strategies to these limitations, as currently developed in their own research works (highly parallelized writing with the use of ultra-sensitive resins).

References:

C. Arnoux, L. A. Pérez-Covarrubias, A. Khaldi, Q. Carlier, P. L. Baldeck, K. Heggarty, A. Banyasz, C. Monnereau, Additive Manufacturing 2022, 49, 102491. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.addma.2021.102491

C. Arnoux, T. Konishi, E. Van Elslande, E.-A. Poutougnigni, J.-C. Mulatier, L. Khrouz, C. Bucher, E. Dumont, K. Kamada, C. Andraud, P. Baldeck, A. Banyasz, C. Monnereau, Macromolecules 2020, 53, 9264-9278. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.macromol.0c01518

Photo: Metalens produced in the framework of the european H2020 Phenomenon project, using a photoresist developed @ LC-ESL. Courtesy of Multiphoton Opics Gmbh