Holographic 3D printing breakthrough produces objects in less than a second

The breakthrough technique constructs complex micro-objects nearly instantaneously

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Through the looking glass: In a laboratory at Tsinghua University in China, researchers have successfully tackled one of the most persistent limitations in 3D printing. They have developed a system that can produce intricate, millimeter-scale objects almost instantaneously – no layering, no waiting, and no compromise between fine detail and rapid output.

The technique is called Digital Incoherent Synthesis of Holographic light fields (DISH). Instead of assembling materials layer by layer, DISH projects a three-dimensional holographic light field directly into a resin volume, solidifying the entire object at once.

Traditional 3D printers resemble methodical builders – stacking countless thin layers, guided by precision nozzles and mechanical gantries. The process is reliable but slow, often taking hours to complete a single detailed structure. DISH replaces these mechanical movements with controlled light, acting more like a volumetric projector than a printer.

The system uses a high-speed rotating periscope to project light from multiple angles into the resin, eliminating the need to rotate the vessel. The overlapping holographic fields then form precise microscale structures, refined through iterative computational optimization.

The result is a printing resolution of 19 micrometers within a 1-centimeter depth range.

In tests, Tsinghua's team demonstrated the creation of fully formed 3D objects in just 0.6 seconds. The system achieved speeds up to 333 cubic millimeters per second while preserving structural details down to 12 micrometers – about one-fifth the width of a human hair.

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This combination of speed and accuracy greatly reduces what engineers have long seen as a hard trade-off in additive manufacturing. The implications span from biomedicine to robotics.

Researchers could, for example, rapidly fabricate high-resolution tissue models, opening new avenues for drug testing and regenerative medicine. In micro-robotics and flexible electronics, the technology's millisecond-scale precision may enable the direct printing of curved, interlinked parts that standard systems cannot produce.

The flexibility in materials – extending to acrylates of varying viscosities – also points toward industrial scalability. Components for photonics, camera modules, or even microelectromechanical systems could be manufactured in bulk without the costly slowdowns that currently define high-resolution printing techniques.

By directly converting digital holograms into physical objects, Tsinghua's DISH system introduces a new paradigm: light as a manufacturing medium. For a technology that once inched forward layer by layer, the speed and refinement unlocked by holographic light projection may represent 3D printing's most significant leap since its inception.

The findings were published in the journal Nature.