Parallelizing Direct Laser Writing: Multitasking on the Nanoscale

Many applications of direct laser writing (DLW) demand high fabrication speeds to realize complex or large structures. Due to the high precision and small feature size, DLW requires comparably long times to fill large volumes. Increasing the writing speed opens up the possibility for new structure dimensions while maintaining a high resolution. To achieve this goal, not only the scan speed of the laser focus has to be increased. By parallelizing the manufacturing process, the writing time of periodic structures decreases tremendously. Periodically arranged structures have a wide range of applications in biology and materials science, e.g. cell scaffolds [1] or metamaterials [2].