GLASGOW, Scotland, Jan. 21, 2026 — Using consumer-grade 3D printers, researchers at the University of Strathclyde produced high-quality, low-cost optical lenses for superresolution microscopy. When they compared the performance of the 3D-printed optics with that of commercial lenses, the results were similar.
In earlier work, the researchers fabricated a fully 3D-printed microscope using a consumer-grade printer. In their current work, they focused on the design and manufacture of a custom, 3D-printed hexagonal (i.e., honeycomb) lenslet array and the integration of this optic into a small, custom, multifocal structured illumination microscopy system (mSIM) for fluorescence imaging.
To achieve an optical surface as smooth as a commercial lens, the researchers created a silicone mold and cast the 3D-printable lens in ultraviolet- (UV)-curable resin. To minimize undesirable effects from diffraction, they developed a method to reduce the optical scattering caused by the layer-by-layer printing process.
The team compared its 3D-printed, honeycomb array to two commercial lenslet arrays — a high-end array with a 250 µm lenslet diameter, and a budget array with a 1 millimeter (mm) by 1.4 mm lenslet footprint. The researchers benchmarked the imaging performance of these optics by quantifying the beam profile homogeneity and the experimental lateral resolution. They used a custom mSIM setup for the benchmarking process.
Researchers at the University of Strathclyde demonstrated a new method for producing high-quality optical lenses for superresolution microscopy using low-cost, consumer-grade 3D printers. Courtesy of the University of Strathclyde.
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