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Categories
» Industrial Nanotechnology Products
» Manufacturing processes
| First laser machine to produce 3d nanostructures |
| Country: |
Germany |
| Link to your website: |
http://www.laser-zentrum-ha... |
Description:
Two-photon polymerization (2PP) is very attractive three-dimensional (3D) rapid microstructuring technology. Its principle is somewhat similar to that of well-known stereo-lithography (SL) technique, but 2PP provides much better structural resolution and quality. The very important distinction between the 2PP and SL technologies is that in case of 2PP, near-infrared (IR) laser pulses, and in case of SL ultraviolet (UV) laser radiation are used for curing of photosensitive materials. Taking into account that photosensitive materials are usually transparent in the infrared and are highly absorptive in the UV range, one can initiate polymerization with IR laser pulses within the volume and fabricate 3D structures, whereas with UV laser radiation, due to single photon absorption, polymerization occurs at the surface. For the fabrication of 3D structures, SL is used as a planar technology, with layer-by-layer polymerization steps, whereas 2PP is a truly 3D high-resolution technology.
In our work, we apply near-infrared Ti:sapphire femtosecond laser pulses (at 800/780 nm) for 3D material processing. When tightly focused into the volume of a photosensitive material (or photoresist), they initiate 2PP process by, for example, transferring liquid into the solid state. This allows the fabrication of any computer-generated 3D structure by direct laser "recording" into the volume of photosensitive material. Because of the threshold behavior and nonlinear nature of the 2PP process, a resolution beyond the diffraction limit (down to 100nm) can be realized by controlling the laser pulse energy and number of applied pulses. Pictures show two scanning electron microscope images of 3D microstructures fabricated by 2PP technique.
Due to flexibility of 2PP the range of applications is very broad, it spans from applications in microoptics, photonics, sensorics to biomedical technologies and tissue engineering. |
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Nano bunny
Nano spiders
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