Two-photon polymerization (2PP) based 3D printing is a well-established technique. However, for the vast majority of its existence, 2PP was realized by applying general-purpose setups that were not tailored to any specific field. This resulted in limitations regarding how much 2PP can proliferate in any one particular area. Therefore, in this work, we will explore what can be achieved if a 2PP setup is built from the ground up for usage in one specific field - biomedical 3D printing. To achieve it a special femtosecond (fs) laser-based setup is assembled with integrated dynamic beam-shaping. Removal of zero order maximum in such an optical setup is demonstrated, and main related peculiarities are discussed. Then the beam-shaping is used to elongate voxels allowing to improve manufacturing throughput by more than two orders of magnitude. We then used the setup and developed voxel elongation methodology to produce biology-oriented structures, such as stents, grafts, and organoid scaffolds. We show excellent biocompatibility and cell growth on the later structures. Overall, the presented results show how focusing on 2PP system design to accommodate one particular field, in this case, biomedicine, helps to exploit the system’s capabilities beyond what general purpose 2PP setup could achieve.
Direct laser writing (DLW) based on the femtosecond (fs) pulse-induced light-matter interaction expanded considerably during the last decades. The key advantage of using fs lasers for DLW is the possibility to exploit various nonlinear light-matter interaction regimes as well as control the thermal aspect of the process. This work is dedicated to exploring the capabilities of expanding DLW in several possible biomedical application areas where fs lasers could yield a very attractive, high throughput solution. Namely, we will be discussing how hybrid additive-subtractive DLW can be exploited for the high-throughput fabrication of integrated microfluidic systems. Furthermore, a mechanical flexible scaffold will be presented. Finally, a possibility to produce very high precision metalized 3D structures by using pre-existing high-throughput multi-photon polymerization capabilities will be shown. In all cases, attention will be placed on the unique capabilities of fs-lasers in DLW as well as practical considerations of the processes and their up-scaling.
Femtosecond (fs) lasers are well established in material processing. Both additive and subtractive processing can be realized with them. Modern amplified fs laser systems can be heavily tuned allowing to use single light source to realize all relevant processing regimes. In this work we exploit it in order to achieve hybrid additive-subtractive 3D micro- and nanomanufacturing. For fabrication we chose highly promising medical devices such as very precise flow meter cell membrane perforators based on microblades or spinning microneedles. We show that the capability of choosing processing regime and perform everything in one workstation simplifies design and fabrication process.
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