Major Breakthrough in Nanoscale 3D Printing Technology

A research team led by Prof. Chen Shih-chi, Department of Mechanical and Automation Engineering, collaborated with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the US and developed the Femtosecond Projection Two-photon Lithography (FP-TPL) printing technology, a groundbreaking discovery that brings nanoscale 3D printing into a brand new era. The achievement has been published in Science.

In comparison with the conventional nanoscale 3D printing technology, FP-TPL makes use of temporal focusing to project a million points simultaneously at the same focal plane for parallel nano-writing, scaling up the fabrication speed by 1,000–10,000 times. This in turn lengthens the laser lifetime extensively and indirectly reduces the average printing cost by 98%. FP-TPL can benefit many fields, ranging from nanotechnology to advanced functional materials, from micro-robotics to drug delivery devices, as it allows the fabrication of large-scale complex and overhanging structures.

This article was originally published in No. 549/550, Newsletter in Jan 2020.