‘Speed’ 3D printing technology in 0.6 seconds

As an essential technology for scientific research and industrial manufacturing, 3D printing has long faced challenges in balancing speed and precision. Printing millimeter-sized objects with high resolution often takes tens of minutes, even hours, making it difficult to meet the needs of scientific research and production.

Dai Qionghai, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, leads a research team from Tsinghua University focusing on computational optics. They found that computational optics not only captures light field information but can also manipulate three-dimensional light fields to build 3D objects, providing a new way to advance 3D printing technology. Research published in the journal Nature this week.

During 5 years of research, the team of experts overcame a series of challenges such as adjusting multi-dimensional light fields at high speed, successfully developing DISH 3D printing technology. Experiments show that the new technology can fabricate complex mm-sized structures in just 0.6 seconds, achieving a minimum printable structure size of 12 micrometers and a printing speed of up to 333 cubic millimeters per second.

According to Wu Jiamin, a member of the research team, DISH helps overcome the speed limitations of point-by-point or layer-by-layer scanning methods, allowing accurate projection of complex 3D light intensity distributions in an extremely short time. Another advantage is that this technology requires a very simple media container, requiring only a flat optical surface, without the need for special structural design. Furthermore, the container remains stationary throughout the printing process, which does not require highly precise movements like traditional methods.

According to Dai, DISH can be applied to the mass production of microscopic components such as photonic computing devices, phone camera modules, parts with sharp corners and complex curved surfaces. In the future, this technology can expand its applications to more complex fields such as flexible electronics, micro robots and high-resolution biological tissue models.