New holographic printer makes 3D shapes—voids and all—in one shot
Using a nanoscale “mask” that diffracts laser light into a desired holographic shape, the process takes as little as 7.5 seconds, a stark contrast from the hours other laser-based printing methods can take
image:
The researchers’ custom resin and computational techniques allow true 3D printing with a single laser exposure.
view moreCredit: Adapted from Lin et. al. Science Advances (2026)
Researchers at the University of Utah’s John and Marcia Price College of Engineering, in collaboration with researchers from The University of Texas at Austin, have demonstrated a new method of 3D printing that avoids the leaky seams that come with the layer-by-layer process. Using a nanoscale “mask” that diffracts laser light into a holographic pattern of the desired shape, it fuses its print material solid in one shot. The process can take as little as 7.5 seconds, a stark contrast from the hours other laser-based printing methods can take.
In a paper published earlier this year, the Price researchers demonstrated this technique by printing microtubule assemblies with individual diameters as small as 6 micrometers. Long, thin tubes were a natural fit for the printing techniques capabilities, but those capabilities are already expanding.
Now, along with colleagues from UT Austin, they have demonstrated even more complicated prints, including ones that have hollow voids along multiple axes.
Their latest study, published in the journal Science Advances, was led by Rajesh Menon, professor in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, along with lab member Dajun Lin. They collaborated with Texas’ Michael Cullinan, associate professor of mechanical engineering, and Zachariah A. Page, associate professor of chemistry, as well as members of their labs.
Like their previous study, this project takes inspiration from photolithography but applies the concept to three dimensions.
The researchers’ prints are made of a specially formulated resin. Consisting of stringy polymers, those molecular threads crosslink and harden when exposed to laser light. The unexposed sections of the substrate can then be easily washed away, leaving the desired shape behind.
In 2D photolithography, that shape is controlled by an opaque mask that blocks the laser from reaching the unwanted parts of the substrate. This approach is fine for two dimensions, since light only needs to reach the substrate’s surface. To apply the concept to three dimensions, the laser must pass through the substrate itself, crosslinking a volume of space inside. The challenge there is accuracy; because the substrate isn’t perfectly transparent, it will diffract the path of the laser as it passes through, causing blurring.
Menon’s group devised a way around the blurring problem: a nanopatterned mask that compensates for the substrate’s diffraction. Placed in front of the light source, the mask channels the laser’s energy only to the volume of substrate that will become the final print.
In their previous demonstration of the printer, the researchers made a variety of complex microtubule arrays, with dimensional ratios as high as 120:1. These prints featured voids along their length and width—the hollow portions of the tubes—but could not make them along the print’s height, leading Menon to call them “extended 2D” rather than “true 3D.”
In their latest paper, however, Menon and colleagues have devised a way around this limitation.
Starting with tweaks to the chemical makeup of their resin, the researchers take advantage of the fact that the light exposure and curing process happen at vastly different timescales, with the former taking place multiple orders of magnitude faster than the other. Through careful computational engineering, the researchers can design their photomasks such that print regions intended to remain hollow voids are kept dark enough to avoid crosslinking.
“We engineer the way light flows through the resin such that there are bright regions where we want curing to happen—the solid regions of the print—and darker regions where we don’t,” says Menon.
The resulting shapes, including a hollow cylinder and cube, serve as a proof-of-concept for even larger prints, all done in a matter of seconds.
Funding for this work came from National Science Foundation Future Manufacturing grant no. 2229036. Partial support was provided by the Robert A. Welch Foundation under grant F-2007.
Other coauthors include Xiaofeng Chen, Connor J. O’Dea, Ji-Won Kim and Keldy S. Mason, members of Page’s lab, Barbara Groh’s, a member of the Cullinan lab, and Apratim Majumder, a member of Menon’s lab. Chih-Hao Chang, professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, along with lab member Kwong Sang Lee, also contributed to the paper.
Journal
Science Advances
Method of Research
Experimental study
Article Title
Single-exposure holographic 3D printing via inverse-designed phase masks
Article Publication Date
12-Aug-2026
The researchers demonstrated several hollow shapes, including this cube.
Credit
Adapted from Lin et. al. Science Advances (2026)
Light-based 3D printing: Innovative 'ink' enables a closed-loop material cycle
Heidelberg research team develops a polymer material that can be broken down into its individual components and reused
image:
Schematic representation of the metastable material (left): the molecular chain is held together by a single lock (orange). As soon as the right chemical key opens this lock, the entire chain breaks down into its constituent parts within seconds (images on the right).
view moreCredit: © The Blasco group
Polymers used for light-based 3D printing are very stable due to their chemical structure, but they are typically hard to recycle. A research team led by Prof. Dr. Eva Blasco, a researcher at the Institute for Molecular Systems Engineering and Advanced Materials (IMSEAM) at Heidelberg University, has now designed a polymer material that can be disassembled into its individual components when needed. A chemical “key” causes already printed material to break down into its molecular building blocks within seconds. They can be recovered and reused in a circular manufacturing process.
Among additive manufacturing – i.e., 3D printing – methods, high-precision light-based approaches such as digital light processing stand out for producing small and complex structures. They are used, for example, in personalized medicine or in soft robotics. These technologies are based on liquid “inks” that cure into solid, three-dimensional structures when exposed to light. They are usually made of so-called thermosets, whose building blocks are permanently and irreversibly linked into a permanent network. This makes the materials very stable, but they are practically non-recyclable and, according to the scientists, could become a source of constant waste streams.
To make light-based 3D printing more sustainable, the Heidelberg research team has designed a so-called metastable material that can be broken down into its individual components without compromising precision, quality, or mechanical stability. As the basis for their work, the scientists used a special polymer that reacts to a chemical signal. “The long molecular chain is held together by a single predetermined breaking point. As soon as a specific chemical trigger opens this site, the entire chain breaks down into its constituent parts within seconds at room temperature, like a row of dominoes,” explains Johannes Markhart, a doctoral student conducting research in Eva Blasco’s team. The predetermined breaking point functions like a lock that opens only with the right key.
In its experiments, the research team was able to use the novel metastable material to produce various complex three-dimensional structures with details on the micrometer scale, thereby demonstrating its suitability as a high-resolution “ink”. “It combines high print quality with a property that has been virtually nonexistent in polymer materials for 3D printing until now: it can be completely disassembled into its individual parts without leaving any residue,” says Johannes Markhart. The scientists were then able to isolate these building blocks and convert them back into a polymer. Spectroscopic analyses confirmed that the chemical composition of the recycled polymer is identical to that of the starting material at the molecular level. “When reused, the material exhibited the same properties as it did during the first printing process,” says Dr. Philipp Mainik, who contributed to the research as a doctoral student.
“Our approach shows that stability and recyclability do not have to be mutually exclusive. We hope that it can pave the way for true chemical circularity and thus contribute to more sustainable manufacturing processes,” emphasizes Prof. Blasco, who, together with her group at IMSEAM and the Institute of Organic Chemistry at Heidelberg University, conducts research at the intersection of macromolecular chemistry, materials science, and additive manufacturing.
The research was conducted within the Excellence Cluster “3D Matter Made to Order”, a collaboration of Heidelberg University and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. The German Research Foundation, the Carl-Zeiss-Stiftung, and the Chemical Industry Fund provided funding for this research. The research findings have been published in the journal “Advanced Materials”.
Journal
Advanced Materials
Article Title
Metastable Polymers for Circular 3D Printing
Article Publication Date
18-Aug-2026
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