Helical structures with novel optical and mechanical properties have been demonstrated and are commonly used in different fields such as metamaterials, microfluidics and cell scaffold. None of conventional fabrication methods has the throughput or flexibility required for patterning large surface area with tunable pitch. In this paper, we report a novel method for high-throughput volumetric fabricating helical structures with tunable shape based on multiphoton polymerization (MPP) using single-exposure, self-accelerating beam with adjustable rotating intensity profile. The lightfields are generated based on high-order Bessel modes and an analytical model is derived to describe the generation and propagation of light-fields. The method is used to fabricated micro-helices with different pitches and handedness in SU-8 photoresist. Beam splitting and galvo-scanning can be implemented in the system. The fabrication of large-scale helical matrices is demonstrated. Compared to point-by-point scanning, our method increases the fabrication throughput by orders of magnitude, paving the way for adopting MPP for mass production of functional devices in many industrial applications.
Helical structures exhibit novel optical and mechanical properties and are commonly used in different fields such as metamaterials and microfluidics. A few methods exist for fabricating helical microstructures, but none of them has the throughput or flexibility required for patterning large surface areas with tunable pitch. In this paper, we report a method for fabricating helical structures with high-throughput and adjustable form based on multiphoton polymerization (MPP) using single-exposure, three-dimensionally structured, self-accelerating, axially tunable light-fields. The light-fields are generated as a superposition of high-order Bessel modes and have a closed-form expression relating the design of the phase mask to the rotation rate of the beam. The method is used to fabricate helices with different pitches and handedness in the material SU-8. Beam splitting and galvo-scanning can be implemented in the system. The fabrication of helical matrices is demonstrated. Compared to point-by-point scanning, our method increases the fabrication speed by two orders of magnitude, paving the way for adopting MPP for mass production of functional devices in many industrial applications.
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