University of Utah Team Prints 3D Shapes in a Single Shot Using Holographic Light

What if 3D printing did not need layers at all?

A team at the University of Utah built a printer that fuses an entire object in one exposure. The trick is a nanoscale mask that turns laser light into a hologram of the part you want.

The study, published in Nature Communications, describes a process that takes roughly 20 seconds. Conventional laser-based printers stack material slice by slice and can take hours for the same geometry.

How it works

The printer uses a substrate called SU-8, a polymer used in microchip manufacturing. A laser passes through a mask that diffracts the light into a 3D pattern inside the resin. Where the light intersects, the polymer crosslinks and hardens. Unexposed material washes away, leaving the finished shape.

Rajesh Menon, professor of electrical and computer engineering, led the work with lab member Dajun Lin. They printed microtubule assemblies with diameters as small as 6 micrometers. Those tiny lattices passed physical toughness tests and carried liquid through capillary action.

Why this matters

Layer-by-layer printing creates seam lines and weak interfaces. This approach builds the whole volume at once, so those weaknesses disappear. The researchers see immediate applications in microfluidics, biomedical devices, and custom optics.

Right now the system is limited to small parts made of SU-8. Scaling to larger objects will require bigger optics and more powerful lasers. The proof of concept, though, is solid. If the method matures, it could rewrite the economics of high-precision manufacturing.