2024-07-20 04:00:04
Imagine a portable 3D printer that might fit in the palm of your hand. Such an innovation would make it possible to quickly create customized, inexpensive objects, such as fasteners for repairing a bicycle wheel or critical components for medical procedures. This futuristic vision is getting closer to reality thanks to researchers at MIT and theUniversité from Texas to Austin, who developed the first printer 3D based on a chip.
Credits: Sampson Wilcox, RLE
The demonstration device consists of a single millimeter-scale photonic chip, emitting reconfigurable light beams in a resin liquid. This resin hardens instantly when exposed to visible light emitted by the chip. Unlike traditional 3D printers, the prototype has no moving parts. It relies on an array of tiny optical antennas to precisely direct the light beam.
By combining silicon photonics and photochemistry, the research team was able to print arbitrary two-dimensional patterns, such as the letters “MIT,” in just seconds. Jelena Notaros, a professor at MIT and lead author of the study, describes this technology as a reinvention of the 3D printer: “This system completely rethinks what a 3D printer is. It’s no longer a big box sitting on a bench in a lab creating objects, but something portable. It’s exciting to think regarding the new applications that might come from this and how the field of 3D printing might change.”.
The researchers eventually envision a system where a photonic chip placed at the bottom of a resin well would emit a 3D hologram of visible light, allowing an entire object to be hardened in a single step. Such a portable 3D printer might revolutionize many fields, particularly medical, by allowing the creation of custom components directly at the site of use.
(a) Typical commercial 3D printer with a photonic chip (boxed in black) for comparison and (b) a fabricated and packaged photonic chip.
(c) Conceptual diagram of the proposed chip-based 3D printer, showing a hologram formed by a chip in a resin chamber (not to scale).
(d) Conceptual diagram of the stereolithography-inspired chip-based 3D printer demonstrated in this work (not to scale)
The prototype is based on a 160-nanometer-thick photonic chip (for comparison, a sheet of paper is 100,000 nanometers thick). Powered by an external laser, the chip emits a beam of light into a photopolymerizable resin, hardening where the beam hits. To control this beam, the researchers use compact liquid crystal modulators, integrated into the chip and tuned via a electric field.
The close collaboration between the Notaros group at MIT, which specializes in silicon photonics, and the Page group at the University of Texas at Austin, which specializes in photopolymerizable resins, was essential. Together, they adjusted the chemical formulations to achieve a long-life, fast-curing resin.
Sabrina Corsetti, a graduate student in electrical and computer engineering, explains: “Here we are halfway between standard photochemistry and silicon photonics by using visible light curing resins and visible light emitting chips to create this 3D printer-on-a-chip. It is a fusion of two technologies into a completely new idea.”.
The application prospects for this technology are vast. In addition to medical and rapid prototyping uses, the team aims to develop a chip capable of generating 3D holograms, thereby improving the efficiency of 3D printing.
1721480347
#printer #fits #hand
