Laser 3D printing of industrial-scale micro-reactors in glass for flow chemistry applications (Invited Paper)

Over the past decades, ultrafast laser internal modification has become a widely adopted approach to enable three-dimensional (3D) micromachining of transparent materials into sophisticated structures and devices with extreme geometrical flexibility. For the industrial-scale applications of complex devices based on hard and brittle materials such as glasses and ceramics, direct fabrication by laser 3D printing is still elusive. In this contribution, a high-resolution, high-throughput ultrafast laser 3D printing method for industrial-scale micro-reactors in glass is developed, through the extreme spatiotemporal manipulation of laser-material interactions deep inside the transparent material. The fabricated glass micro-reactors with sophisticated 3D microfluidic channels and large liquid holding volumes usher a revolution in flow-chemistry applications, evidenced by their applications in high-throughput and high-performance continuous-flow synthesis of advanced pharmaceutical and chemical products.