Functional micro-concrete 3D hybrid structures fabricated by two-photon polymerization

Abstract

Arbitrary micro-scale three-dimensional (3D) structures fabrication is a dream to achieve many exciting goals that have been pursued for a long time. Among all these applications, the direct 3D printing to fabricate human organs and integrated photonic circuits are extraordinary attractive as they can promote the current technology to a new level. Among all the 3D printing methods available, two-photon polymerization (2PP) is very competitive as it is the unique method to achieve sub-micron resolution to make any desired tiny structures. For the conventional 2PP, the building block is the photoresist. However, the requirement for the building block is different for different purposes. It is very necessary to investigate and improve the photoresist properties according to different requirements. In this paper, we presented one hybrid method to modify the mechanical strength and light trapping efficiency of the photoresist, which transfers the photoresist into the micro-concretes. The micro-concrete structure can achieve ±22% strength modification via a silica nano-particles doping. The structures doped with gold nano-particles show tunable plasmonic absorption. Dye doped hybrid structure shows great potential to fabricate 3D micro-chip laser.