Two-photon polymerization system based on a resonant scanner for high-throughput production of tissue engineering microscaffolds

Abstract

Two-photon polymerization (2PP) is a 3D printing technique renowned for its outstanding resolution and the capability to produce complex structures directly within a material volume. While the technology has matured substantially since its first demonstration, the long processing times attributed to the high resolution, remain a significant obstacle for the use of 2PP in production. This study introduces a novel 2PP setup designed to address this limitation by significantly boosting the throughput, by at least one order of magnitude compared to existing commercial products. This improvement is realized through the implementation of a resonant scanner technology to rapidly direct the laser during fabrication. All optical components were selected carefully, to avoid any limitations that may emerge when the scanner is no longer the lone bottleneck for production throughput. Additionally, newly developed characterization and calibration methods, employed to optimize structuring accuracy and throughput, are discussed.