A facile multi-material direct laser writing strategy.

Direct laser writing (DLW) is a three-dimensional (3D) manufacturing technology that offers vast architectural control at submicron scales, yet remains limited in cases that demand microstructures comprising more than one material. Here we present an accessible microfluidic multi-material DLW (mu FMM-DLW) strategy that enables 3D nanostructured components to be printed with average material registration accuracies of 100 +/- 70 nm (.X) and 190 +/- 170 nm (.Y) -a significant improvement versus conventional multimaterial DLW methods. Results for printing 3D microstructures with up to five materials suggest that mu FMM-DLW can be utilized in applications that demand geometrically complex, multi-material microsystems, such as for photonics, meta-materials, and 3D cell biology.