AccScience Publishing / IJB / Online First / DOI: 10.36922/IJB025280281
REVIEW ARTICLE
Early Access

From cell to organ: The technical challenges in two-photon polymerization for biomedical engineering

Yanzhe Fu1, 2† Mingming Huang3† Jiayong Wei4 Xiang Ding2 Bosong Yu5 Jiebo Li1* Jianmin Han6* Lizhen Wang1* Yubo Fan1*
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1 Key Laboratory of Biomechanics and Mechanobiology (Beihang University), Ministry of Education; Key Laboratory of Innovation and Transformation of Advanced Medical Devices, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology; National Medical Innovation Platform for Industry-Education Integration in Advanced Medical Devices (Interdiscipline of Medicine and Engineering); School of Biological Science and Medical Engineering, Beihang University, Beijing, 100191, China
2 Center for Medical Metrology, National Institute of Metrology, Beijing 100029, China
3 Department of Dental Materials, Peking University School and Hospital of Stomatology, Beijing 100081, China
4 Industrial Science and Engineering Technology Laboratory, Hangzhou International Innovation Institute, Beihang University, Hangzhou, 311115, China
5 School of Instrumentation and Optoelectronic Engineering, Beihang University, Beijing 100191, China
6 Department of prosthetic, Tianjin Medical University School and Hospital of Stomatology&Tianjin Key Laboratory of Oral Soft and Hard Tissues Restoration and Regeneration, 12 Qixiangtai road, Heping District, Tianjin 300070, China.
†These authors contributed equally to this work.
Received: 11 July 2025 | Accepted: 13 August 2025 | Published online: 20 August 2025
© 2025 by the Author(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ )
Abstract

Nanomanufacturing technology plays a crucial role in advancing sophisticated biomedical devices, biochips, tissue engineering, and advanced biomedical materials. Two-photon polymerization (TPP) offers nanoscale fabrication precision, eliminates the need for masks, and allows the creation of arbitrary three-dimensional structures, providing technical advantages that are unparalleled by traditional methods. The application of TPP technology in the biomedical field presents new challenges related to materials and systems. Although there has been significant discussion regarding biomaterials, comparatively little attention has been given to the limitations of manufacturing systems for biomedical functional devices. Currently, commercial TPP systems predominantly rely on point-by-point scanning for fabrication, which leads to low throughput. From a biomedical perspective, the goal is to achieve manufacturing precision at the single-cell level while scaling production throughput to the organ level. To expand the applications of TPP in biomedical engineering, advancements in both precision and throughput are critical. This review begins by introducing the fundamental principles of TPP. It summarizes recent advancements in the applications of TPP within the fields of tissue engineering, medical devices, and microfluidics. It then delves into the technological progress of TPP in recent years, focusing on aspects such as system design, manufacturing processes, and fabrication principles. The review highlights advancements in areas like the kinetics of light-matter interactions and the development of cutting-edge techniques such as spatiotemporal focusing. Finally, it discusses the future development directions of TPP technology in the biomedical field.

Keywords
Two-photon polymerization
Biomedical functional devices
Tissue engineering
Kinetics
Spatiotemporal focusing
Funding
Beijing Natural Science Foundation (L232109), Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (YWF-22-K-101). Funding from Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Biomedical Engineering.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare they have no competing interests.
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International Journal of Bioprinting, Electronic ISSN: 2424-8002 Print ISSN: 2424-7723, Published by AccScience Publishing