The rapid development of 3D printing technology is transforming the landscape of the manufacturing industry. As a revolutionary manufacturing method, 3D printing enables fast and customized production while offering designers and engineers more possibilities for innovation.
By combining various functional materials with intricate 3D structures, 3D printing provides a new means for constructing micro-nano functional materials, optoelectronic integrated devices, biochips, and more.
Traditional 3D printing techniques, such as fused deposition modeling, photopolymerization, and powder sintering, face challenges when working with inorganic materials due to their high melting points, brittleness, and particle agglomeration. Direct 3D printing of inorganic materials like semiconductors, which possess superior optical, electrical, and magnetic properties crucial to the electronics and information industry, is still difficult to achieve.
Inorganic materials, like semiconductors or metal oxides, face challenges in forming bonds under 3D printing conditions, leading to the need for polymers as templates. This often results in low purity of the inorganic components in the printed mixture and a loss of the original material characteristics.
A new 3D printing method called 3D Pin has been developed, using colloidal nanocrystal ink, small-molecule crosslinking agents, and femtosecond laser for precise nanoscale printing of inorganic materials with high purity (over 90% inorganic component mass fraction) and resolution up to 150 nanometers.
This method combines colloidal nanocrystal chemistry design with femtosecond laser manufacturing technology, offering the following advantages:
- The 3D Pin method is versatile and can be applied to a wide range of materials, including semiconductors (such as II-VI, III-V, and metal halide perovskites), metals (such as gold), and semiconductor oxides (such as indium oxide and titanium oxide). This enables the printing of diverse materials and complex structures.
- The high spatiotemporal resolution characteristics of nonlinear light excitation confine the bonding and diffusion processes between nanocrystals in the printing solution, achieving precise construction of nanoscale, complex 3D structures.
- 3D printing using tunable nanocrystal size and structure results in unique hierarchical structures with high mechanical performance and excellent optical properties, demonstrated by chiral helical structures of II-VI semiconductors exhibiting significant chiral light absorption characteristics over a broad spectral range.
This research work has developed a new chemical method for 3D printing inorganic materials, providing new insights for expanding the library of 3D printing materials and constructing 3D structures and devices based on inorganic materials.
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