Development and Characterizations of Liquid Bridge Based Microstereolithography (LBMSL) System

In this work, a novel liquid bridge based microstereolithography (LBMSL) was proposed and developed. The liquid bridge was first introduced into the MSL process by replacing the vat, allowing the entire fabrication process to occur within the liquid bridge. The liquid bridge was studied theoretically and experimentally in order to obtain the stable equilibrium shape and the relationship between the height and the volume of the liquid bridge. Using the LBMSL process, the fabrication layer thickness of 0.5 μm was reached. This could not be easily achieved in the vat-based MSL due to the oxygen inhibition to the photopolymer. Fabrication of a photopolymer with a viscosity of 3000 cP was tested and significant results were obtained. Compared with the vat-based MSL, the material consumption in LBMSL was reduced and the fabrication time was improved greatly, in particular, when using higher viscous materials.