Scalable additive manufacturing via integral image formation

TL;DR

This paper introduces a scalable stereolithography system using a planar lens array that enables high-resolution microstructure fabrication over large areas, surpassing traditional resolution-area limits.

Contribution

The authors develop a novel integral lithography technique combining multiple imaging functions with a planar lens array for scalable additive manufacturing.

Findings

Enables fabrication of microstructures from micrometers to centimeters.

Supports large-area, high-resolution 3D microarchitectures.

Surpasses traditional resolution-to-area scaling limits.

Abstract

Additive manufacturing techniques enable the fabrication of functional microstructures with mechanical and chemical properties tailored to their intended use. One common technique is stereolithography, which has recently been augmented in response to modern demands to support smaller features, larger build areas, and/or faster speeds. However, a limitation is that such systems typically utilize a single-aperture imaging configuration, which restricts their ability to produce microstructures at large volumes due to the tradeoff between the image resolution and image field area. In this paper, we demonstrate three versatile imaging functions based on the coupling a planar lens array, namely, parallel image transfer, kaleidoscopic superposition, and integral reconstruction, the combination of which is termed integral lithography. In this approach, the individual microlenses in the planar lens array maintain a high numerical aperture and are employed in the creation of digital light patterns that can expand the printable area by the number of microlenses (103-104). The proposed lens array-based integral imaging system provides the concurrent ability to scale-up and scale-down incoming image fields, thereby enabling the scalable stereolithographic fabrication of three-dimensional features that surpass the resolution-to-area scaling limit. The proposed system opens up new possibilities for producing periodic microarchitectures spanning four orders of magnitude from micrometers to centimeters that can be applied to biological scaffolds, metastructures, chemical reactors, and functional surfaces.