When we think about 3D printing, our mind often jumps to hot nozzles squirting out molten plastic. Other popular techniques include flashing bright light into resin, or using lasers to fuse together metal powders. All these techniques are great at producing parts with complicated geometries at desktop scales.
However, it’s also possible to 3D print at altogether microscopic scales. Researchers in Germany have now developed advanced macromolecular “inks” that can be used to create microscopic 3D sculptures with finer control than ever before.
Exacting Requirements
Macromolecular inks were produced with exacting structures, and used to print buckyballs for mechanical and chemical testing. Credit: Catt, Hackner, Spatz, Blasco, 2023
At the cutting edge of 3D printing, Eva Blasco’s team at the University of Heidelberg has successfully created 3D printed structures with meticulously designed molecular sequences. This technique echoes the precision found in polymers in the natural world – akin to the way DNA can code for precisely specific amino acids of exacting composition.
Researchers first meticulously engineered the molecular sequence of their inks, with an eye to gaining unprecedented control of the printed product’s fundamental properties. In simpler terms, Blasco and her team worked to arrange molecules in a custom sequence to create unique structures with exacting properties.
Blasco’s team created a series of inks, each with unique permutations of eight molecular units, to observe how changing the sequence impacts the properties of the printed structures. These are referred to as sequence-defined or macromolecularly-defined polymers in the scientific literature. They often require complex chemical synthesis in order to produce molecules with the precise desired struct ..
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