This grant provides funding to develop an innovative 3-D additive manufacturing process capable of producing uniform metal and polymer features with nanometer resolution for applications in optics, photonics, biomaterials and other areas. The project will combine the patterning resolution and scaling benefits provided by the recently developed optical trap assisted nanopatterning method with the 3-D additive capabilities of ultrafast multiphoton polymerization processing. In order to achieve this goal, it is necessary to attain a deeper fundamental understanding of these processes, which will be gained through controlled experiments that are aimed at determining the relationship between the experimental parameters and the resulting properties of the deposited materials. Armed with this detailed knowledge, the project will then proceed to develop a working model that predicts how to control feature size and material properties.
If successful, this research will have a profound impact on a number of diverse application areas where multiscale and multifunctional 3-D architectures are needed to advance functionality, such as in photonic materials, optoelectronics, microfluidics, tissue engineering, etc. Broad dissemination in these areas through publications and international presentations will ensure researchers gain widespread benefit from our studies. It is envisioned that this research is a seed for a novel international collaboration between researchers at Princeton and University of Erlangen-Nurenberg, School of Advanced Optical Technologies (UEN-SAOT) in Germany for 3-D laser based manufacturing. To this end, funds have been allocated to support the travel to UEN-SAOT where other researchers and students will be trained in this developing technology.
