Holograms Take 3D Printing to the Next Level – With Amazing Precision and Speed

Scientists have utilized holographic projections to achieve unprecedented resolution in a light-based 3D printing technique.

Traditional 3D printing builds objects layer by layer, but tomographic volumetric additive manufacturing (TVAM) takes a different approach. It uses laser light to illuminate a rotating vial of resin, solidifying material only where the accumulated energy surpasses a specific threshold. A key advantage of TVAM is its speed—it can produce objects in seconds, whereas conventional layer-based 3D printing takes about 10 minutes. However, its efficiency is a major drawback, as only about 1% of the projected light contributes to forming the intended shape.

Researchers from EPFL’s Laboratory of Applied Photonic Devices, led by Professor Christophe Moser, and the SDU Centre for Photonics Engineering, led by Professor Jesper Glückstad, have developed a more efficient TVAM technique, as reported in Nature Communications.

Their method reduces the energy required for fabrication while improving resolution. Instead of encoding information in the amplitude (height) of projected light waves, as in traditional TVAM, their approach projects a three-dimensional hologram of the desired shape onto the rotating resin vial, leveraging the phase (position) of the light waves for greater precision.

This small change has a big impact. “All pixel inputs are contributing to the holographic image in all planes, which gives us more light efficiency as well as better spatial resolution in the final 3D object, as the projected patterns can be controlled in the projection depth,” Moser summarizes.

In the recently published work, the team printed complex 3D objects such as miniature boats, spheres, cylinders, and art pieces in under 60 seconds with exceptional accuracy, using 25 times less optical power than previous studies.

Mimicking complex biological structures

The holograms are generated using a technique called HoloTile, which was invented by Professor Glückstad. HoloTile involves superimposing multiple holograms of a desired projection pattern, and eliminates random light interference called speckle noise that would otherwise create grainy images. Although holographic volumetric additive manufacturing has been reported previously, the joint EPFL-SDU team’s approach is the first to yield such high-fidelity 3D-printed objects, largely thanks to the use of HoloTile.

The method allows the fabrication of millimeter-scale objects within seconds. Credit: LAPD EPFL

EPFL student and lead author Maria Isabel Alvarez-Castaño explains that another unique aspect of the holographic approach is that the hologram beams can be made ‘self-healing’, meaning they can spread through a resin without being thrown off course by small particles. This self-healing property is essential for 3D printing with bio-resins and hydrogels that are loaded with cells, making the method ideally suited for biomedical applications.

“We are interested in using our approach to build 3D complex shapes of biological structures, allowing us to bio-print, for example, life-scale models of tissues or organs,” says Alvarez-Castaño.

Going forward, the team aims to improve the efficiency of their method another twofold. Moser says that with some computational enhancements, the ultimate goal is to use holographic volumetric additive manufacturing to fabricate objects by simply projecting a hologram onto a resin, without needing to rotate it. This could further simplify volumetric additive manufacturing and increase the potential for high-volume, energy-efficient fabrication processes. He adds that the fact that the holograms can be coded using standard commercial equipment adds to the practicality of the approach.

“The holographic addition to TVAM technology sets the stage for the next generation of efficient, precise, and rapid volumetric additive manufacturing systems,” he summarizes.

Reference: “Holographic tomographic volumetric additive manufacturing” by Maria Isabel Álvarez-Castaño, Andreas Gejl Madsen, Jorge Madrid-Wolff, Viola Sgarminato, Antoine Boniface, Jesper Glückstad and Christophe Moser, 11 February 2025, Nature Communications.
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-56852-4