R.D. Sochol
University of Maryland, College Park,
United States
Keywords: additive manufacturing, 3D printing, direct laser writing, two-photon polymerization
Summary:
During former President Barack Obama’s 2013 State of the Union Address, he remarked on the potential for additive manufacturing “to revolutionize the way we make almost everything.” Despite this potential, progress has been impeded by broad challenges associated with 3D printing technologies at smaller length scales. Recent breakthroughs in 3D micro/nanoprinting, however, hold unique promise to overcome past barriers and enable new frontiers for fundamental and applied research. In this invited presentation, I discuss how my Bioinspired Advanced Manufacturing (BAM) Laboratory is leveraging “Two-Photon Direct Laser Writing (DLW)”—an additive manufacturing technique with printing resolutions down to the 100 nanometer range—for emerging applications, including: (i) 3D microinjection needle technologies, (ii) bioarchitecturally relevant organ-on-a-chip systems, and (iii) soft microsurgical robots.