3D Printing Mesoscale Optical Components with a Low-Cost Resin Printer Integrated with a Fiber-Optic Taper

3D Printing Mesoscale Optical Components with a Low-Cost Resin Printer Integrated with a Fiber-Optic Taper

Citation

Nair S, P.; Wang, H.; Trisno, J.; Ruan, Q.; Rezaei, S. D.; Simpson, R. E.; Yang, J. K. W. 3D Printing Mesoscale Optical Components with a Low-Cost Resin Printer Integrated with a Fiber-Optic Taper. ACS Photonics 2022, 9, 2024–2031. 

Keywords

  • 3D printing
  • Mesoscale optical components
  • Resin printing
  • Fiber-optic taper (FOT)
  • Resolution enhancement
  • Surface smoothness
  • Fresnel lens
  • Two-photon polymerization lithography (TPL) 

Brief

This article describes a novel technique for improving the resolution and surface quality of 3D printed mesoscale optical components using a low-cost resin printer integrated with a fiber-optic taper.

Summary

The article, "3D Printing Mesoscale Optical Components with a Low-Cost Resin Printer Integrated with a Fiber-Optic Taper," published in ACS Photonics in 2022, explores a method for improving the resolution and surface quality of 3D printed mesoscale optical components using a low-cost resin printer. The authors, Parvathi Nair S, Hongtao Wang, Jonathan Trisno, Qifeng Ruan, Soroosh Daqiqeh Rezaei, Robert E. Simpson, and Joel K. W. Yang, highlight the challenges of fabricating mesoscale (100 μm to 5 mm) optical components using existing 3D printing techniques.

While techniques like two-photon polymerization lithography (TPL) excel at micro-to-nanoscale fabrication with high resolution and surface quality, they become time-consuming for larger mesoscale objects. Conversely, stereolithography apparatus (SLA)-based printing, while faster, typically results in lower resolution and surface quality.

To address this, the authors introduce a fiber-optic taper (FOT) to a low-cost resin printer. The FOT demagnifies the images projected from the printer's LCD screen, effectively increasing the print resolution. This modification resulted in a resolution of 15 μm half-pitch, a significant improvement over the printer's native 35 μm half-pitch resolution.

The integration of the FOT also led to smoother surfaces, with a measured roughness of ~100 nm compared to ~2 μm for directly printed structures. The authors attribute this improvement to the FOT's ability to filter out high-spatial-frequency components and the uniform exposure provided by the closely spaced fibers.

The effectiveness of this technique was demonstrated by fabricating a Fresnel lens. The FOT-printed lens exhibited sharper ring edges, well-defined Fresnel zones, and a focal spot size close to the simulated value.

The authors acknowledge the limitation of reduced print volume due to the FOT's size but believe this technique provides a cost-effective solution for fabricating mesoscale optical components with high resolution and surface quality.

Origin: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/epdf/10.1021/acsphotonics.2c00125

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