Article Abstracts | October 2006
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Two-Photon Polymerization: A New Approach to Micromachining
Femtosecond lasers enable microfabrication with resolution beyond the diffraction limit.
by Andreas Ostendorf and Boris N. Chichkov, Laser Zentrum Hannover eV
The rapid technical development of ultrashort laser systems is creating exciting possibilities for very precise localization of laser energy in time and space. These achievements have triggered novel laser applications based on nonlinear interaction processes.
A promising three-dimensional microfabrication method that has recently attracted considerable attention is based on two-photon polymerization with ultrashort laser pulses.
1-5 When focused into the volume of a photosensitive material (or photoresist), the pulses initiate two-photon polymerization via two-photon absorption and subsequent polymerization. After illumination of the desired structures inside the photoresist volume and subsequent development — e.g., washing out the nonilluminated regions — the polymerized material remains in the prescribed 3-D form. This allows fabrication of any computer-generated 3-D structure by direct laser “recording” into the volume of a photosensitive material...
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