---
title: "UC Santa Barbara secures $1.15m NSF grant for two-photon 3D nanoprinting system"
url: https://www.voxelmatters.com/uc-santa-barbara-secures-1-15m-nsf-grant-for-two-photon-3d-nanoprinting-system/
date: 2026-07-04
modified: 2026-07-04
lang: en
author: "Joseph Caron-Dawe"
description: "UC Santa Barbara (UCSB) has received a $1.15 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to purchase a 3D rapid nanoprinting system based on two-photon photolithography. The equipment will..."
categories:
  - "AM Research"
  - "Money & Funding"
tags:
  - "future"
image: https://www.voxelmatters.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/UCSB-NSF-grant-01-640x340.jpg
word_count: 368
---

# UC Santa Barbara secures $1.15m NSF grant for two-photon 3D nanoprinting system

[UC Santa Barbara (UCSB)](https://www.voxelmatters.com/postdocs-at-ucsb-develop-a-bottlebrush-elastomer-for-am/) has received a $1.15 million grant from the [National Science Foundation (NSF)](https://www.voxelmatters.com/rit-gets-3-million-nsf-grant-to-advance-metal-3d-printing-with-recycled-feedstocks/) to purchase a 3D rapid nanoprinting system based on two-photon photolithography. The equipment will expand the capabilities of the university's Nanofabrication Facility, known on campus as the ‘Nanofab’.

Galan Moody, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at UCSB, led the proposal as principal investigator, working with four co-principal investigators: Marley Dewey of Bioengineering, Andrew Jayich of Physics, Sumita Pennathur of Mechanical Engineering, and Andrea Young of Physics.

![UC Santa Barbara secures $1.15m NSF grant for two-photon 3D nanoprinting system](https://www.voxelmatters.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Galan-Moody-UCSB-340x340.jpg)Galan Moody, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at UCSB

The grant positions UCSB to take a leadership role with a class of tools that remains rare in U.S. academia. “There are just a few universities in the U.S. that have tools with these capabilities,” Moody stated.

The team argued that the equipment fills a gap left by current methods. The tools are needed, the proposal stated, “because we are at the limit of what can be achieved with existing nanofabrication tools, which have enabled wafer-scale fabrication of semiconductors, dielectrics, and metals with resolution down to approximately ten nanometers [nm], but only in a planar [essentially two-dimensional] geometry.

“Additional complex, time-consuming steps are required to create increasingly essential 3D microstructures”.

[Conventional lithography, Moody explained, transfers a pattern onto a thin film only a few hundred nanometers thick](https://www.voxelmatters.com/all-you-need-to-know-about-the-past-present-and-future-of-stereolithography/), leaving little room to build in the vertical dimension.

## What makes the technology new

Early additive manufacturing systems produced three-dimensional objects only by stacking very thin layers that had length and width but little real depth. The new system prints microstructures directly on-chip in genuine three dimensions.

“The unique capabilities of this system open the door to new approaches to nano- and micro-manufacturing of complex structures and devices that are no longer constrained by geometry nor confined to two-dimensional planes,” the authors wrote.

One application lies in quantum photonics, where losing light as it passes from a chip into an optical fiber remains a persistent problem. The system can print a polymer lens less than 50 micrometers wide onto the edge of a chip or onto a fiber, shaping the optical mode so that light couples from one into the other with minimal loss.