Tackling the Inherent Speed-Accuracy Trade of the 3D Printing Process

Additive manufacturing (AM), also known as 3D printing, refers to the processes of creating 3D objects from computer-aided design models via the sequential addition of the materials. While being proven to be a powerful tool in fabricating sophisticate 3D structures, translating AM technologies to provide economically viable solutions for practical applications still faces two main barriers: Firstly, the serial nature of the additive building processes results in the inherent speed-accuracy trade-off, which seriously limits the scalability and efficiency of manufacturing functional devices requiring precise control of the fine features; Secondly, functional integration of the products goes far beyond the mere creation of complex 3D structures. It requires a broad range of functional materials being specifically tailored for the specific AM processes.In this talk, I will present two research projects with the focus to tackle the above-mentioned challenges. The first project aims to develop 3D printing process for rapid fabrication of optical components. In the second project, we focused on the 3D printing of hierarchical structure using silk fibroin being extracted from the natural silk. We hope the reported work will offer a highly reliable solution for scalable manufacturing of functional devices with fine control over multiple dimension scales.