Skyphos Technologies has been awarded its second U.S. patent, adding to a growing intellectual property portfolio that now includes nearly a dozen patent applications in process around the world. This latest patent secures core technologies and methods that allow micro-scale parts to be produced in seconds, at throughputs designed to exceed legacy manufacturing such as injection molding.
A new way to the third dimension
The newly issued patent covers multi-wavelength polymerization, an emerging approach that Skyphos pioneered. By integrating and using multiple light frequencies, the company has dramatically expanded cure-depth control compared with traditional systems, enabling both fine microstructures and deep features in a single build. This technique is drawing significant interest from universities and industry because it can cure multiple materials at once and boost print speeds by an estimated 30–100x over standard vat-polymerization processes.
Skyphos has developed three clear, biocompatible resins specifically tuned to this process and has also validated several off-the-shelf materials, giving customers a practical path from development to regulated applications.
Dynamic Layering: a gearbox for 3D printing
Having coined the term “Dynamic Layering,” Skyphos likens this innovation to adding a gearbox to a 3D printer—different speeds for different road conditions. The system can change layer heights and exposure conditions on the fly, switching between thick, fast layers for bulk regions and ultra-thin penetrating modes where high-precision membranes or microfeatures are needed. As a result, whole parts can be produced in just a few seconds in some geometries, dramatically increasing build speed while preserving fidelity where it matters most.
By pushing additive manufacturing throughput into a range traditionally reserved for injection molding, and mating it with a fully digital workflow, Skyphos eliminates hard tooling and does not inherently require a cleanroom, reducing capital cost and shortening time to first part.
“It’s a tectonic shift,” said Elliot McAllister, founder and CEO of Skyphos Technologies. “Digital manufacturing lets clients iterate, shift, or alter designs at any time, with no fixed points in the process where you have to stop and retool. The root problem in additive has always been speed and materials; with this improvement we can now move clients across
the development spectrum faster than legacy molding and support them through high volumes.”
Recognized global leader in lab-on-a-chip
Skyphos has been recognized twice in the past five years as a global Top 5 lab-on-a-chip startup, underscoring its position among the world’s leading lab-on-a-chip engineering firms. The company also gained international visibility last year as a finalist in the 3D Printing Industry Awards “Innovation of the Year” category for its micro-3D printing platform and Dynamic Layering technology.
Focus on tiny features for diagnostics
Skyphos focuses on microbiological systems for diagnostics and advanced wearables, manufacturing parts with tolerances on the order of single microns. Many of its customers require features and channels at or below the width of a human hair for microfluidic chips, lab-on-a-chip devices, and microneedle-based systems.
One of the company’s fastest-growing segments is international business, particularly in microneedle manufacturing for drug delivery and skin-based diagnostics. Within about three months of launching its microneedle work, Skyphos drew interest from several prominent U.S. and international laboratories, including Georgia Tech, the University of Georgia, UPenn, Harvard, and MIT. Earlier this year, the company signed a development contract with a European-based stealth biotech firm that operates three sites in the EU and two in the United States. If the program is successful, Skyphos will serve as that company’s primary manufacturing partner for the next five years, a relationship expected to shorten time to market by a year or more while providing real-world feedback from trials in both the U.S. and EU.
Microneedle arrays are one of the closest-to-market microfluidic technologies, with several companies and academic groups advancing drug delivery patches and diagnostic samplers toward commercialization. Global estimates put the microneedle drug delivery systems market in the multibillion-dollar range and high probability for commercialization by the end of this decade as new vaccines, biologics, and long-acting therapies move into patch-based formats.
Dry and freeze-dried vaccine formats are already moving through clinical trials and, in some cases, FDA approval, opening the door to thermostable, patch-based delivery at scale. This could reduce or even bypass cold-chain requirements and enable mail-based population inoculation models that look very different from today’s clinic-centered campaigns.
Local roots in the innovation ecosystem
Skyphos founder and CEO Elliot McAllister is a Virginia Tech materials science graduate and an alumnus of the second cohort of RAMP, the Roanoke region’s technology and life sciences accelerator. Skyphos is based in the Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center in Blacksburg, where it continues to grow alongside the region’s expanding biotechnology and advanced manufacturing ecosystem.