Simultaneous printing and deformation of microsystems via two-photon lithography and holographic optical tweezers

Abstract

The purpose of this work is to enable the simultaneous printing and deformation of polymer microsystems using an integrated two-photon lithography (TPL) and holographic optical tweezers (HOT) approach. This approach is the first of its kind to enable the fabrication of advanced metamaterials, micromechanisms, soft microrobots, and sensors that require embedded strain energy in their constituent compliant elements to achieve their intended behaviors. We introduce a custom-developed photopolymer chemistry that is suitable for near-infrared (NIR) TPL fabrication but remains unreactive in the visible-light regime for HOT-based handling. We facilitated the optimal HOT-based actuation of TPL-fabricated microsystems by advancing a ray-optics-based optical-force simulation tool to work with microbodies of any arbitrary shape. We demonstrate the utility of this integrated system via fabrication of three unique case studies, which could not be achieved using any alternative technologies.