Unconventional 2D and 3D Printing Tools with Hard and Soft Material Compatibilities

The ability to arrange molecules in precise 2D or 3D configurations underpins numerous applications, including the writing, printing, prototyping, manufacturing, and construction of new materials. Importantly, these diverse applications require tools that can operate across length scales, from nano to macro. Here, we will discuss the transition of Dip-Pen Nanolithography (DPN) from an atomic force microscopy-based imaging tool to a 2D writing tool to a tip-based synthesis and high-throughput materials discovery tool that is impacting fields spanning medicine to clean energy. DPN, a technique where molecules are transferred to a surface via the capillary effect, gave rise to Polymer Pen Lithography (PPL), a highly parallelized cantilever-free tool that can be used to simultaneously create millions of features comprised of hard or soft matter on surfaces. With the advent of Beam-Pen Lithography (BPL), another successor of DPN, light, instead of the physical contact of tips on a surface, was exploited to independently control each tip in arrays of thousands of them to allow for the printing of materials with dimensions below the diffraction limit (100 nm). Insights gained from the development of these molecular printers ultimately led to the development of the world’s highest throughput 3D printers based on High Area Rapid Printing (HARP) technology. HARP is a continuous printing technique that facilitates the production of large objects at speeds previously unattainable in traditional 3D printing processes, and it enhances the practical utility of additive manufacturing to the industrial-scale production of customized parts. This presentation will delve into the underlying materials chemistry behind each of these techniques and a broad swath of their potential applications.