3D microstructuring of hybrid organic-inorganic materials by two-photon polymerization technique

Two-photon polymerization (2PP) is a novel rapid prototyping technique allowing the fabrication of complex 3D structures from photopolymerizable materials. The key advantages of the 2PP technique over other rapid prototyping approaches are; one-step 3-dimensional microstructuring capability, and superior resolution. The lowest feature size reported to date in 3D structures produced by conventional 2PP is 65 nm [1]. Recently, by using a more sophisticated illumination setup involving photoinduced deactivation, a resolution of 40 nm has been reported [2]. The feature size can be enlarged by adjusting the focus of the optical setup to provide larger beam sizes. Therefore, this single technique is capable of patterning features from the micro-to the nano-scale, and, as such, 2PP brings rapid prototyping into the realm of 3D nanofabrication.