3D printing and silicon photonics have combined in a rather exciting way this week. Researchers at MIT have engineered a novel 3D printing design on a single computer chip, officially the world's first chip-based 3D printer. The chip emits beams of light into a well of resin to fabricate designs, and will be iterated on to create a fully volumetric 3D printer on a chip.
The printer employs no moving parts, using a series of nanometer-scale antennas to direct beams of light into a small well of resin. "Prints" are completed in seconds, with the chip capable of fabricating two-dimensional patterns, such as letters. The chip itself is a bespoke silicon photonic chip, designed by the team.
