Fabrication of large-scale micro-structures by two-photon polymerization with a long-stroke precision stage

Abstract

This article demonstrates the fabrication of large-scale micro-structures by two-photon polymerization with an integrated long-stroke precision stage. We first design a three-axial stage that combines a piezoelectric transducer stage and a stepper-motor stage, and we apply gain-scheduling and robust control with a feedforward compensator to achieve nano-positioning within a travel range of 10 cm. We then integrate the precision stage with a two-photon polymerization module to manufacture large-scale micro-structures, including 1 mm linear gratings, 1 cm parallel lines, and 200 μm Fresnel zone plates. We further define performance indexes to evaluate the qualities of these products: the linear gratings achieve an image error of 4.73%, while the 1 cm lines have an average error of 0.2 μm with a standard deviation of 0.05 μm, and the Fresnel zone plates attain a focal error of 0.4% and a focus efficiency of 64%. These results confirm the effectiveness of the proposed use of the precision stage and two-photon polymerization for large-scale micro-structure manufacturing.