Conceptual Design of a Pick-and-Place 3D Nanoprinter for Materials Synthesis

The past decade has seen revolutionary advances in three-dimensional (3D) printing and additive manufacturing. However, a technique to create 3D material microstructures of arbitrary complexity has not yet been developed. We present the conceptual design of a 3D material microprinter as a concrete step toward an eventual 3D material nanoprinter. Such a device would enable the use of heterogeneous starting materials with printing resolution on the order of tens of nanometers. By combining a pick-and-place particle transfer method with a custom-built laser sintering optical microscope, the core components of the 3D printer are once again reimagined. This advance moves toward generalized material synthesis as an experimental technique to complement computational materials discovery of materials with unique structures and high interface density, such as 3D nanocomposites, metamaterials, and photonic structures.