3D microstructuring of hybrid organic-inorganic materials by two-photon polymerization technique

Two-photon polymerization (2PP) is a rapid prototyping technique allowing the fabrication of complex 3D structures with submicrometer resolution. In this work, we present recent results on two-photon microstructuring of novel photocurable hybrid organic-inorganic materials developed by the sol-gel process. Sol-gel material synthesis permits the precise tailoring of material properties by appropriate selection of chemical precursors and processing conditions. The resulting materials have properties ranging from those of glass-like to pure organic polymers. The sol-gel formulations presented here have been developed from metal alkoxides, and have the advantage of low shrinkage coefficients and excellent mechanical and optical properties. In this work we have examined the minimum feature size of structures fabricated by 2PP as a function of the concentration of inorganic components within the sol-gel material.