"Advanced Processes for High-Resolution Vat Photopolymerization: Enhancing Precision and Scalability"
Advanced, high-resolution additive manufacturing has garnered significant interest and translational potential via applications in wide-ranging areas from bioengineering, drug and vaccine delivery, microfluidics, granular systems, self-assembly, microelectronics, and abrasives. In response to the growing demand for versatile, precise, and scalable high-resolution microarchitectures, many novel techniques have arisen. Herein, we detail advancements made towards single-digit-micron resolution Continuous Liquid Interface Production (CLIP). Critical evaluation of instrumentation, optomechanics, and precision light dosage profiles yield the potential to fabricate microparticle architectures. Analytical treatment of sub-25 μm working curve approaches yields critical system parameters and limitations, informing curing models. Substitution of a traditional build platform with a continuous film introduces scalability at the micron-level, developed into a technique coined roll-to-roll CLIP (r2rCLIP), facilitating rapid and flexible fabrication and harvesting of shape-specific particles from a diverse range of materials, achieving complex geometries unattainable with conventional particle mold-based fabrication techniques. We demonstrate r2rCLIP to achieve voxel sizes as small as 2.0 × 2.0 μm2 in the print plane and unsupported thicknesses of single microns. Quasi-continuous production yields up to 106 particles per day. This process can be orthogonally expanded via a novel high-area, high-resolution orbital manufacturing process detailed herein, expanding build area multiple times without sacrificing resolution. Moreover, the techniques developed within this work enable many novel, scalable, previously inaccessible or implausible manufacturing spaces including in drug and vaccine delivery, granular physics, and cell and cell secretion capture.