Amazing stuff! Is there something you can not put on a chip? 😊
"... Imagine a portable 3D printer you could hold in the palm of your hand. The tiny device could enable a user to rapidly create customized, low-cost objects on the go ...
The prototype chip has no moving parts, instead relying on an array of tiny optical antennas to steer a beam of light. The beam projects up into a liquid resin that has been designed to rapidly cure when exposed to the beam’s wavelength of visible light. ...
Their proof-of-concept device consists of a single, millimeter-scale photonic chip that emits reconfigurable beams of light into a well of resin that cures into a solid shape when light strikes it.
In the [future], they envision a system where a photonic chip sits at the bottom of a well of resin and emits a 3D hologram of visible light, rapidly curing an entire object in a single step. ..."
From the abstract:
"Imagine if it were possible to create 3D objects in the palm of your hand within seconds using only a single photonic chip. Although 3D printing has revolutionized the way we create in nearly every aspect of modern society, current 3D printers rely on large and complex mechanical systems to enable layer-by-layer addition of material. This limits print speed, resolution, portability, form factor, and material complexity.
Although there have been recent efforts in developing novel photocuring-based 3D printers that utilize light to transform matter from liquid resins to solid objects using advanced methods, they remain reliant on bulky and complex mechanical systems.
To address these limitations, we combine the fields of silicon photonics and photochemistry to propose the first chip-based 3D printer. The proposed system consists of only a single millimeter-scale photonic chip without any moving parts that emits reconfigurable visible-light holograms up into a simple stationary resin well to enable non-mechanical 3D printing. Furthermore, we experimentally demonstrate a stereolithography-inspired proof-of-concept version of the chip-based 3D printer using a visible-light beam-steering integrated optical phased array and visible-light-curable resin, showing 3D printing using a chip-based system for the first time. This work demonstrates the first steps towards a highly-compact, portable, and low-cost solution for the next generation of 3D printers."
Although there have been recent efforts in developing novel photocuring-based 3D printers that utilize light to transform matter from liquid resins to solid objects using advanced methods, they remain reliant on bulky and complex mechanical systems.
To address these limitations, we combine the fields of silicon photonics and photochemistry to propose the first chip-based 3D printer. The proposed system consists of only a single millimeter-scale photonic chip without any moving parts that emits reconfigurable visible-light holograms up into a simple stationary resin well to enable non-mechanical 3D printing. Furthermore, we experimentally demonstrate a stereolithography-inspired proof-of-concept version of the chip-based 3D printer using a visible-light beam-steering integrated optical phased array and visible-light-curable resin, showing 3D printing using a chip-based system for the first time. This work demonstrates the first steps towards a highly-compact, portable, and low-cost solution for the next generation of 3D printers."
Silicon-photonics-enabled chip-based 3D printer (open access)
Fig. 1: The chip-based 3D printer concept.
Fig. 2: The 3D-printer integrated optical phased array architecture
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