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Additive manufacturing (or "three-dimensional (3D) printing") technologies offer unique means to expand the architectural versatility with which microfluidic systems can be designed and constructed. In particular, "direct laser writing (DLW)" supports submicron-scale 3D printing via two-photon (or multi-photon) polymerization; however, such high resolutions are poorly suited for fabricating the macro-to-micro interfaces (i.e., fluidic access ports) critical to microfluidic applications. To bypass this issue, here we present a novel strategy for using DLW to 3D print architecturally complex microfluidic structures directly onto-and notably, fully integrated with-macroscale fused silica tubes. Fabrication and experimental results for this "ex situ DLW (esDLW)" approach revealed effective structure-to-tube sealing, with fluidic integrity maintained during fluid transport from macroscale tubing, into and through demonstrative 3D printed microfluidic structures, and then out of designed outlets. These results suggest that the presented DLW-based printing approach for externally coupling microfluidic structures to macroscale fluidic systems holds promise for emerging applications spanning chemical, biomedical, and soft robotics fields. 

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 (μFMM-DLW) strategy that enables 3D nanostructured components to be printed with average material registration accuracies of 100 ± 70 nm (Δ X ) and 190 ± 170 nm (Δ Y ) – a significant improvement versus conventional multi-material DLW methods. Results for printing 3D microstructures with up to five materials suggest that μFMM-DLW can be utilized in applications that demand geometrically complex, multi-material microsystems, such as for photonics, meta-materials, and 3D cell biology.