Nanoscribe installs GT2 3D printer in Keio University

20 May 2019

First installation offers optimized design, new printing materials to enable high-resolution microstructures up to 8mm.

Keio University, one of Japan’s most prestigious private universities is the first customer to receive Nanoscribe's latest 3D printer, known as model Photonic Professional GT2.

The installation at the university's Center for Research, Faculty of Science and Technology is expected to open up "completely new opportunities in many fields of applications such as mechanical, electrical, chemical and life sciences," say the partners.

Following the successful installation of the system, Tomoaki Mitani, manager at Central Service Facilities for Research, commented, “Both, the School of Medicine and the Faculty of Science and Technology, will have access to this powerful microfabrication tool.” The range of possible applications extends from the printing of microchannels for electrochemical sensors to the development of novel optical elements and tissue engineering research in 3D cultures.

'Pioneering ideas'

Nanoscribe's CEO Martin Hermatschweiler said that he is pleased that users at KEIO can now realize pioneering ideas that were beyond their reach before. Already, more than 180 Nanoscribe systems worldwide are used for various applications in science and industry. “And our user community is steadily growing due to a large number of multi-user facilities,” said Hermatschweiler.

The company added that this first installation of a GT2 could be considered as "a journey back to the starting point of the technology of two-photon polymerization ("2PP"), which is the technological base of Nanoscribe’s 3D printers. In 1997 Professor Satoshi Kawata provided the experimental proof of two-photon polymerization in Japan.

Now, for more than ten years, Nanoscribe says it has taken advantage of 2PP's strengths "to expose photoresists with extreme focus and highest resolution enables the direct fabrication of nano- and microstructures that would otherwise be impossible to produce."

Relaunched in December 2018, the GT2 is said to "push the boundaries of nano- and microfabrication offering new solutions for additive manufacturing and maskless lithography."

With optimized hardware and software components as well as new printing materials specially developed for larger volumes, high-resolution microstructures up to a height of 8 mm can be produced for the first time. Nanoscribe devices are designed for additive production of fine structures. Now objects with submicrometer details from typically 160 nm up to the millimeter range on a printing area of up to 100x100 mm² can now be produced rapidly.