A low-cost, open-access two-photon lithography tool

Two-photon polymerization has been demonstrated to be a highly promising technology for fabricating 3D structures with sub-micron resolution for a wide variety of applications, including optics, microfluidics, mechanics, and more. Fabricating optics in particular typically requires sub-micron feature sizes and positioning. Commercially available point-scan two-photon polymerization systems typically cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, making them out of reach for most individual research groups. Here we present an initial design for a modular two-photon lithography (2PL) platform. With a total cost ranging from USD $30-150K depending on configuration, this system significantly lowers the entry barrier to two-photon fabrication. In addition to the optical and mechanical design and a complete bill of materials (BOM), we release a publicly available lithography software stack that enables arbitrary voxel-level grayscale control through simple three-dimensional NumPy matrices. The modular and extensible nature of the system allows for straightforward modification, making it suitable both as a research platform and as an educational tool for expanding access to two-photon lithography.