Femtosecond pulsed laser ablation as a method to overcome resolution limits within 3D SLA prototyping in microfluidics

¹ Photonics4Life Research Group, Applied Physics Department, Facultade de Física and Facultade de Óptica e Optometría, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, E15782 Santiago de Compostela, Spain.
² Department of Pharmacology, Pharmacy, and Pharmaceutical Technology, I+D Farma (GI-1645), Facultade de Farmacia, and Health Research Institute of Santiago de Compostela (IDIS), Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, E15782 Santiago de Compostela, Spain
³ Instituto de Materiales (iMATUS), Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, E15782 Santiago de Compostela, Spain.

^* Corresponding author: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Published online: 22 September 2025

Abstract

3D Stereolithography (SLA) technologies have emerged as a novel methodology to create a wide range of structures in the millimetric scale. Nevertheless, advancements in fields such as microfluidics or medicine rely on the creation of structures featuring micrometric resolution. SLA encounters resolution limits when printing objects within this range of sizes, especially when requiring hollow structures. On its side, femtosecond (fs) laser ablation emerges as a technique overcoming these limitations. The non-linear phenomena involved in the fs laser-matter interaction enable to perform a neat and precise extraction of material, resulting in a laser writing featuring microns. We propose a hybrid approach combining SLA and fs laser ablation to create a multi-chamber microfluidic chip where micrometric substructures enable an accurate confinement of the samples.