DISCOVERY ARTICLES
NANO
3D PRINTING:
VIRGINIA TECH LEADS DRIVE
TOWARD SCALABLE
3D PRINTING TECHNOLOGY
The National Science Foundation
awarded $400,000 to Virginia Tech
as part of an initiative to build
the theoretical and experimental
foundations of scalable, 3-D printing at
the nano-level.
Rayne Zheng, assistant professor
of mechanical engineering, will use the
award for Additive Nano-Manufactur-
ing of Resilient Materials to develop
technologies to allow researchers to
3-D print at the nano-level and scale up
their creations.
“Current commercially available
additive manufacturing technology
doesn’t include a printer of the
resolution and scalability needed to
do work at the nanoscale level,” Zheng
said. “This grant program will support
building the foundations needed to
underpin scalable additive nano-manu-
facturing.”
Zheng’s research will look at how to
create three-dimensional constructs
with nanoscale features, with the goal
of creating materials that are extremely
strong mechanically and have exceptional
thermal and electrical conductivity.
Using controlled precision optics and
photosensitive materials, Zheng and
his team will work toward developing
and understanding the processes that
produce scalable nano-architected
materials that will be lightweight and
capable of energy storage, among other
applications.
“In our early work we’ve created 3-D
nano-architected materials that are
simultaneously strong and damage
tolerant,” Zheng said. “However, we
realize there are challenges with current
high-precision 3-D manufacturing
technologies in scaling up nano patterns
to sizes comparable to the size of
the palm of a hand. With the support
of the NSF, we hope to make a leap
forward, gaining new knowledge on
the underpinnings of high-resolution
additive nano-manufacturing of scalable
materials and components.”
11