Passive 6G Communication Enhancements With 3D Printed Panels

Materials science is the domain of understanding materials at the microscopic, often atomic, level to improve them. The most common goal is to make a material stronger than in its classical form, be it steel, glass, or ceramic.

Metamaterials bring it one step further by changing the structure of the material, giving it different characteristics than the properties of the base materials it is made from. This is most often achieved by creating repeating patterns of precise shape, geometry, size, orientation, etc.

Such metamaterials can be used to encode data, create scalable quantum light sources, create self-assembling structures with DNA, and can even be 3D laser-printed

Most passive metasurfaces work well only for one polarization, frequency band, or incidence angle, which limits their practical use.

A new design called metacrystals, created with a form of 3D printing, is instead being proposed by researchers at the Aalto University (Finland) and the Stanford University (USA), which can “enable highly complex multiplexed responses to multiple incident waves simultaneously and independently”.

It was published in Nature Communications¹, under the title “Metacrystals: inversely-designed 3D-printed intelligent panels for 6G communication“. This discovery could have important applications in 6G telecom and other wireless systems, at a low cost.

Metacrystal for 6G Telecom

Applications In 6G Technology

6G telecom promises higher data rates, improved energy efficiency, and lower latency by using frequencies such as millimeter (mm) waves and sub-THz bands. These radio frequencies carry a lot of potential for data transmission, but come with their own challenges: high atmospheric attenuation, free-space path loss, and harsher scattering effects when encountering obstacles.

This forces engineers to rely on directional beams for communication instead of traditional multipath propagation.

Source: ResearchGate

Thanks to their unique reflection or refraction properties, metasurfaces could be strategically positioned on walls, ceilings, and even windows to substantially enhance both indoor and outdoor signal coverage.

In particular, passive designs are attractive because they need no power supply and can be manufactured at low cost. This is especially true as programmable metasurfaces have proven to be too expensive for widespread adoption so far, in addition to their large physical footprint (approximately one square meter).

“Although traditional design approach would require three separate intelligent surfaces to cover the specified functionalities, the proposed metacrystal can replace them all, saving the deployment footprint, minimizing the material use, and avoiding possible interference problems.”

Ideally, the perfect metamaterial would be an intelligent surface able to operate effectively across both signal polarizations, multiple frequency bands, various angles of arrival, and even all at once.

What Are Metacrystals?

The material proposed in this study, metacrystals, are “all-dielectric binarized composites”.

In essence, this means a passive metacrystal can receive a signal and re-emit it in another direction with minimal loss or energy consumption, making it a perfect relay for telecommunication signals like 6G that might otherwise be obstructed, especially in an urban environment.

Source: Nature Communications

“The passive, fabrication-friendly nature of the metacrystal makes it an attractive candidate for static infrastructure integration, where low cost, low power, and high directional control are prioritized. ”

The term itself is derived from this material similarity to both photonic crystals (supporting multiple diffraction orders) and metamaterials (with deeply sub-wavelength building blocks).

Making Metacrystals

The researchers created three demonstrators to prove the concept was viable with a real-life example and test the manufacturing methods.

The design itself used many complex techniques already used for the production of metamaterials, like the inverse design method using adjoint-based topology optimization.

For the first two demonstrators, they used “grayscale permittivity distributions”, or slowly varying the properties of the crystal over its surface.

Source: Nature Communications

The third demonstrator was fabricated using 3D printing. The researchers added thin supporting layers to ensure structural integrity and to make it suitable for implementation with existing 3D printing capabilities.

Metacrystals can be designed to match many different frequencies, but the researchers focused on the 100 GHz area, which is useful for telecommunications: 100 GHz, 99 GHz, and 102.53 GHz.

“The demonstrated single-nozzle, low-cost FDM fabrication route is directly applicable up to  ~ 100 GHz, which already covers the most widely discussed near-term 6G-relevant spectrum ranges, including mm-wave spectrum in the 24–71 GHz range.”

Multi-Layer Metacrystals For Multiple Signals

One fundamental advantage of the metacrystals used here is that not only do they work as re-emitters in a tight direction fashion, but they also can work with multiple signals at once, making a given re-emitter much more useful as an antenna.

Angles of 0°, 20°, and 45° were chosen to test the concept. But any other number or more angles could have been possible as well.

“The number of simultaneous functionalities is not fundamentally limited. A larger number typically requires a metacrystal with larger thickness. This example thus illustrates that we can select the angles of arrival from different transmitters independently.”

3D-Printing Antennas

By using 3D printing for the third prototype, the researchers aimed to create a polarization-insensitive response in the resulting metacrystal, as it is an essential characteristic in many practical situations.

To make manufacturing simple, they used only one material during fabrication, polyacrylic acid (UltiMaker PLA of silver color), and then alternated it spatially with air gaps (as air has a different permittivity).

Other commercially available printer filament materials could also be used, for example, filaments, such as “Zetamix ε” (a  3D printing filament by Nanoe designed specifically for radio frequency (RF) and microwave applications) have also good permittivity.

These methods open the way to low-loss and low-cost fabrication options of such metacrystals, likely much cheaper than traditional antennas and other metamaterials.

Testing Telecommunications

To test the real-world performance of their metacrystal antennas, the researchers used a dedicated measurement room (echo-less). The performance was tested in a non-line-of-sight scenario.

To maintain a setting closer to real-world conditions, several supporting stands within the anechoic chamber were left uncovered with absorbers, introducing additional sources of scattering.

The presence of the metacrystal antenna greatly increases the resulting signal strength.

Source: Nature Communications

Large Potential

While mostly tested for 6G and a specific frequency, the method described in this study can be a lot more versatile.

For example, extending metacrystals to sub-THz and THz frequencies would primarily require higher-resolution manufacturing, with different cost/throughput trade-offs than the low-cost FDM route used here.

This greater precision can range up to two-photon polymerization microfabrication, where feature-size control down to  ~ 100 nm is available.

The approach is fully compatible with conventional 3D-printing manufacturing, which makes it scalable, cost-effective, and suitable for mass production.

For example, the researchers estimate that the fabrication cost (consumables) of a metacrystal with a surface area similar to the prototypes in the study is only $15.

In practical installations, the metacrystal panel could be packaged for environmental durability, for example, using an encapsulation layer, and supported by routine maintenance to preserve its long-term performance.

Investing In Telecom 3D-Printed Materials

Nano Dimension

This study is just one among many that show that 3D printing has many more potential applications than rare complex parts or prototyping. By creating a highly replicable and elaborate structure that a mold never could, it can turn cheap material like plastic filaments into a wonder material for telecommunication. However, bridging the gap between low-cost academic prototypes and commercial mass-production remains a complex hurdle, drawing intense focus toward industrial market leaders.

Nano Dimension started with a focus on 3D-printed electronics, pioneering Additively Manufactured Electronics (AME) to handle complex spatial geometries. This position evolved when it successively acquired, in all-cash transactions in 2025, its competitors Desktop Metal and Markforged. This added many new materials, including high-tolerance metals, to the offer of the company, and helped it consolidate the 3D-printed electronic market.

This also created economies of scale by merging the customer base that includes SpaceX, Tesla, GE, Honeywell, Emerson, Raytheon, NASA, Medtronics, etc.

Lastly, the acquired companies were mostly active in different geographic areas, with Nano Dimension in Europe and Desktop Metal in the US, allowing for synergy by merging their sales teams.

Source: Nano Dimension

Yet, scaling proprietary nanoparticle technology to compete with ultra-low-cost alternatives has proven to be a heavy financial lift. For now, the company remains focused on proving the commercial economics of its multi-material platforms, navigating an overall shift from the integration of its 2025’s M&A to scaling a unified technology platform across its global markets.

Investors need to be aware that the company has long been struggling to manage positive net income, reflecting the wider macroeconomic challenges and operational headwinds facing the industrial additive manufacturing sector.

In Q1 2026, Nano Dimension grew its revenues 106% year-to-year to $29.7M, and registered a $12.5M loss in adjusted EBITDA and $69.7M net loss. It held $441.6M in cash and other cash-equivalent liquid assets.

So the future of the company’s stock will be tightly bound to its capacity to turn advanced structural engineering into sustainable commercial revenue while defending its position as a technology leader in a rapidly evolving market.

Latest Nano Dimension (NNDM) Stock News and Developments

Study Referenced

^{1. Mohammad M. Asgari, et al. Metacrystals: inversely-designed 3D-printed intelligent panels for 6G communications. Nature Communications 17, 4912 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-73019-x}