High-resolution tomographic volumetric additive manufacturing

Tomographic additive manufacturing produces complex parts with a wide range of printable materials but remains limited in terms of resolution. Here, the authors tune the etendue of the light source and accurately control the photopolymerization kinetics using an integrated feedback system, leading to the fabrication of high resolution features. In tomographic volumetric additive manufacturing, an entire three-dimensional object is simultaneously solidified by irradiating a liquid photopolymer volume from multiple angles with dynamic light patterns. Though tomographic additive manufacturing has the potential to produce complex parts with a higher throughput and a wider range of printable materials than layer-by-layer additive manufacturing, its resolution currently remains limited to 300 mu m. Here, we show that a low-etendue illumination system enables the production of high-resolution features. We further demonstrate an integrated feedback system to accurately control the photopolymerization kinetics over the entire build volume and improve the geometric fidelity of the object solidification. Hard and soft centimeter-scale parts are produced in less than 30 seconds with 80 mu m positive and 500 mu m negative features, thus demonstrating that tomographic additive manufacturing is potentially suitable for the ultrafast fabrication of advanced and functional constructs.