Research & Technology
3D Printer With Nano Precision
Ultra-high-resolution 3D printer at Vienna University of Technology
breaks speed records
FIG. 1: This is a 285 micrometer racecar,
printed at the Vienna University of
Technology. (Source: TU Vienna)
Printing three dimensional objects with
incredibly fine details is now possible us-
ing “two-photon lithography”. With this
technology, tiny structures on a nanometer
scale can be fabricated. Researchers at the
Vienna University of Technology (TU Vien-
na) have now made a major breakthrough
in speeding up this printing technique:
Their high-precision-3D-printer is orders of
magnitude faster than similar devices. This
opens up completely new areas of applica-
tion, such as in medicine.
The 3D printer uses a liquid resin, which
is hardened at precisely the correct spots
by a focused laser beam. The focal point
of the laser beam is guided through the
resin by movable mirrors and leaves behind
a polymerized line of solid polymer, just a
few hundred nanometers wide. This high
resolution enables the creation of intricately
structured sculptures as tiny as a grain of
sand. “Until now, this technique used to be
quite slow”, says Professor Jürgen Stampfl
from the Institute of Materials Science and
Technology at the TU Vienna. “The printing
speed used to be measured in millimeters
per second – our device can do five meters
in one second.” In two-photon lithography,
this is a world record.
This amazing progress was made pos-
sible by combining several new ideas. “It
was crucial to improve the control mech-
anism of the mirrors”, says Jan Torgersen
(TU Vienna). The mirrors are continuously
in motion during the printing process.
The acceleration and deceleration-periods
have to be tuned very precisely to achieve
high-resolution results at a record-breaking
speed.
© 2012 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim
FIG. 2: This is a model of St. Stephen’s
Cathedral in Vienna – smaller than a grain
of sand. (Source: TU Vienna)
Photoactive Molecules Harden the
Resin
3D-printing is not all about mechanics –
chemists had a crucial role to play in this
project too. “The resin contains molecules,
which are activated by the laser light. They
induce a chain reaction in other compo-
nents of the resin, so-called monomers, and
turn them into a solid”, says Jan Torgersen.
These initiator molecules are only activated
if they absorb two photons of the laser beam
at once – and this only happens in the very
center of the laser beam, where the inten-
sity is highest. In contrast to conventional
3D-printing techniques, solid material can
be created anywhere within the liquid resin
rather than on top of the previously created
layer only. Therefore, the working surface
does not have to be specially prepared be-
fore the next layer can be produced, which
saves a lot of time. A team of chemists led by
Professor Robert Liska (TU Vienna) developed
the suitable initiators for this special resin.
Because of the dramatically increased
speed, much larger objects can now be cre-
ated in a given period of time. This makes
two-photon-lithography an interesting
technique for industry. At the TU Vienna,
scientists are now developing bio-compat-
ible resins for medical applications. They
can be used to create scaffolds to which liv-
ing cells can attach themselves facilitating
the systematic creation of biological tissues.
The 3d printer could also be used to create
tailor made construction parts for biomedi-
cal technology or nanotechnology.
www.tuwien.ac.at