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Laser-assisted direct three-dimensional printing of free-standing thermoset devices

Nature Electronics volume 8, pages 1059–1071 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

The three-dimensional printing of thermoset materials is of use in the development of flexible electronics and soft robotics. However, the process typically involves the deposition and removal of supporting materials that require extensive cycles of pre- and post-processing. Here we describe a three-dimensional printing method for constructing functional and arbitrary free-standing thermoset structures without using supporting materials. The approach integrates in situ laser-induced solidification with direct ink writing. During printing, the integrated laser is focused on a micro-sized polymer jet, leading to thermoset crosslinking in less than 0.25 s through a strong photothermal effect. The process offers a resolution as fine as 50 μm, with mechanical properties tunable by up to tenfold and electrical properties by up to 20-fold. We used this approach to print stretchable electronics with stiffness gradients for strain inhibition, flexible sensors with high sensitivity and three-dimensional soft magnetic robots for actuation functions.

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Fig. 1: Rapid in situ laser-assisted direct 3D printing of thermoset sensors and actuators.
Fig. 2: ISLI printing for rapid in situ gelation based on the photothermal effect.
Fig. 3: Optical pictures of unsupported 3D structures with diverse thermosets.
Fig. 4: Demonstration of ISLI printing of stretchable electronics-based substrates with various stiffness regions.
Fig. 5: ISLI printing for flexible sensors.
Fig. 6: ISLI printing process of free-standing structures for magnetically actuated soft robots.

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Data availability

Source data are provided with this paper. Other data related to this work are available from the corresponding authors upon reasonable request.

Code availability

The code used in this work is available via Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17121654 (ref. 59).

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 52075464) and the Science & Technology Plan of Xiamen City (Grant No. 3502Z20224030, both grants to D.W.).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Pen-Tung Sah Institute of Micro/nano Science and Technology, Xiamen University, Xiamen, China

    Qibin Zhuang, Yiyi Zhang, Xin Liu, Wei Xiao, Zhiwen Chen, Lianjie Lu, Zhengmao Ding, Songyue Chen, Qinnan Chen, Daoheng Sun & Dezhi Wu

  2. Shenzhen Research Institute of Xiamen University, Shenzhen, China

    Qibin Zhuang, Yiyi Zhang, Xin Liu, Wei Xiao, Lianjie Lu & Dezhi Wu

  3. The Grainger College of Engineering, Materials Research Laboratory, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA

    Shubham Patel

  4. School of Instrument Science and Technology, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, China

    Libo Zhao

  5. The Grainger College of Engineering, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering, Department of Bioengineering, Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, Nick Holonyak Micro and Nanotechnology Laboratory, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA

    Cunjiang Yu

  6. Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Liwei Lin

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Contributions

Q.Z. and D.W. conceived the concept and proposed the project. Q.Z., Y.Z. and X.L. conducted the experiments. Z.C., W.X. and L. Lu conducted the FEA. Q.Z. and D.W. wrote the paper. S.C., Q.C. and L.Z. commented on the organization of the figures. Z.D., D.S., C.Y., S.P. and L. Lin revised the paper. All authors discussed the results and commented on the paper.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Liwei Lin or Dezhi Wu.

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Nature Electronics thanks Kunal Masania and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary Information (download PDF )

Supplementary Notes 1–4, Tables 1–4, Figs. 1–36, Captions to Videos 1–4 and Refs. 1–41.

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Supplementary Video 1 (download MP4 )

ISLI printing of diverse 3D freestanding thermoset structures.

Supplementary Video 2 (download MP4 )

Stretchable electronics with stiffness gradients.

Supplementary Video 3 (download MP4 )

ISLI printing process of freestanding structures for magnetically actuated soft robots.

Supplementary Video 4 (download MP4 )

Locomotion and potential applications of the magnetically actuated soft robots.

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Zhuang, Q., Zhang, Y., Liu, X. et al. Laser-assisted direct three-dimensional printing of free-standing thermoset devices. Nat Electron 8, 1059–1071 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41928-025-01491-2

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