Designable 3D Microshapes Fabricated at the Intersection of Structured Flow and Optical Fields

Area of Science:

• Materials Science
• Microfabrication
• Biomedical Engineering

Background:

• Fabricating complex 3D microstructures at scale is challenging.
• Existing methods like two-photon polymerization are too slow for high throughput.
• Template-based methods offer limited control over multi-axis geometries.

Purpose of the Study:

• To present a novel microshape fabrication method.
• To enable high-resolution production of complex 3D microshapes.
• To achieve high-throughput microfabrication.

Main Methods:

• Combines a thermally drawn transparent fiber template with masked UV-photopolymerization.
• Enables biaxial control of microshape fabrication.
• Functionalizes fiber templates with conductive electrodes for dielectrophoretic manipulation.

Main Results:

• Demonstrates high-resolution production of complex microshapes like octahedrons and dreidels.
• Achieves high throughputs of up to 825 structures per minute.
• Enables hierarchical subparticle localization using dielectrophoresis.

Conclusions:

• The presented method overcomes limitations of existing microfabrication techniques.
• It allows for the creation of intricate microshapes not previously possible.
• The technique is suitable for applications in biomedical engineering, self-assembly, and photonics.