The world’s smallest wine glass has a rim that is smaller than the width of a human hair and was 3D-printed by researchers. However, the objective was not to target extremely light drinkers. Instead, the glass was printed to show a new, easier way to make silica glass structures for everything from robotics to telecommunications.
According to KTH Professor Frank Niklaus, the new method, which was developed at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, gets around issues like the need for thermal treatment when 3D-printing essential components made of silica glass. Nature Communications is the journal that published the work.
According to Niklaus, it can be utilized in a variety of applications, including filters and couplers for fiber optic networks, microrobots that navigate extreme environments, and customized lenses for medical machinery that perform minimally invasive surgery.
“The internet’s backbone is made up of optical fibers made of glass. In those systems, various filters and couplers are required, which can now be 3D printed using our technology,”
Kristinn Gylfason, an associate professor of Micro- and Nanosystems at KTH.
The study produced a fiber-optic filter of this kind. The researchers demonstrate that the method can print devices directly on an optical fiber tip as thin as a human hair strand.
“Optical fibers made of glass serve as the foundation for the internet’s backbone. According to co-author Kristinn Gylfason, an associate professor of Micro- and Nanosystems at KTH, “all kinds of filters and couplers are required in those systems, which can now be 3D printed using our technique.” Numerous new possibilities emerge as a result.”
According to Po-Han Huang, a doctoral student at KTH, the method significantly reduces the amount of energy required to 3D print silica glass, which typically requires heating materials to several hundred degrees for several hours. The benefit of our strategy is that there’s no requirement for warm treatment, and the glass can endure outrageous intensity in applications.”
He claims that the method can produce silica glass from commercially available materials, which is another advantage.
He asserts that since thermal treatment is no longer required, the technique has a better chance of being widely applied in a variety of applications. The challenges associated with integrating 3D printing techniques typically vary from application to application. We believe our method represents a significant and necessary breakthrough for the practical application of 3D glass printing, even though it still needs to be optimized for various applications.
What about that glass of wine, then? Is it really the smallest in the world? After all, a lot of demonstration objects, like model cars and statues, have already been 3D printed. According to Niklaus, the difference is this demonstration’s use of glass. No one has ever 3D printed a wine glass made of 3D-printed glass,” he asserts.
More information: Po-Han Huang et al, Three-dimensional printing of silica glass with sub-micrometer resolution, Nature Communications (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-38996-3
