Additive manufacturing (AM) is a cutting-edge technique that has seen significant growth in various industrial sectors, including aerospace, automotive, military, medical, and dentistry. This revolutionary technology involves the creation of physical products from CAD models, using a layer-by-layer manufacturing process. AM offers several benefits, including the production of complex geometries that are difficult to achieve through traditional manufacturing methods. Customized products and small batches can be produced quickly, with minimal material loss, and at a cost-effective price point.
The unique characteristics of AM make it a particularly attractive manufacturing option for the medical field. There are numerous applications under development, including orthopaedics and prosthetics, dental implants, medical devices, surgical tools, hearing aids, virtual surgical planning, drug delivery, printed drug-releasing implants, printed ingestible tablets, tissue engineering, organoids, 3D models, implants, and bone regeneration. Despite being an unconventional and relatively new manufacturing technology, AM has a wide range of uses in the fields of medicine, healthcare, and engineering. One of the reasons for this is the flexibility in the method of 3D printing and printing materials.
In the field of biomedical applications, metals and alloys are a particularly important class of materials. They can be divided into two categories: degradable alloys and non-degradable alloys. Non-degradable metallic materials are designed to persist in the body for a very long time, while biodegradable metallic materials are intended to degrade gradually over time. Degradable alloys are ideal for surgical processes where a support or scaffold is placed into the body during the healing process of bones, eliminating the need for a second surgery to remove the implant and lowering the cost and discomfort of a second surgery. They can also be designed to release drugs or other therapeutic agents over time. For these reasons, such alloys require particular mechanical, chemical, physical, and biological properties. The non-degradable alloys should not react with the body for extended implanting times.
AM is highly dependent on the type, composition, structure, and shape of the materials available for printing using a specific technique. This means that various products can be printed, such as hollow parts, parts with internal structures, parts made of porous or cellular structures, like tissues or cells for bioprinting, scaffolds with lattice structures, bones with dense internal networks, and parts with intricate and complex geometries. A wide range of materials can be printed, including plastic filaments, metallic powder, ceramics, hydrogels, carbon fibre, composites, wood, rubber, and even living cells.
While metallic, polymeric, and ceramic materials have already been produced using AM, additional research is still required to meet the expanding demands of AM, especially for metallic materials. Materials and techniques still have tremendous promise and scope for further improvement in the pharmaceutical, drug delivery, and bio-medicinal sectors. This issue aims to highlight the new advances in metallic materials and techniques of AM in medical fields, especially if case studies are available.
Keywords:
Metallic and nonmetallic materials, biodegradable materials, AM techniques, medical devices, biomedical applications, case studies
Important Note:
All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
Additive manufacturing (AM) is a cutting-edge technique that has seen significant growth in various industrial sectors, including aerospace, automotive, military, medical, and dentistry. This revolutionary technology involves the creation of physical products from CAD models, using a layer-by-layer manufacturing process. AM offers several benefits, including the production of complex geometries that are difficult to achieve through traditional manufacturing methods. Customized products and small batches can be produced quickly, with minimal material loss, and at a cost-effective price point.
The unique characteristics of AM make it a particularly attractive manufacturing option for the medical field. There are numerous applications under development, including orthopaedics and prosthetics, dental implants, medical devices, surgical tools, hearing aids, virtual surgical planning, drug delivery, printed drug-releasing implants, printed ingestible tablets, tissue engineering, organoids, 3D models, implants, and bone regeneration. Despite being an unconventional and relatively new manufacturing technology, AM has a wide range of uses in the fields of medicine, healthcare, and engineering. One of the reasons for this is the flexibility in the method of 3D printing and printing materials.
In the field of biomedical applications, metals and alloys are a particularly important class of materials. They can be divided into two categories: degradable alloys and non-degradable alloys. Non-degradable metallic materials are designed to persist in the body for a very long time, while biodegradable metallic materials are intended to degrade gradually over time. Degradable alloys are ideal for surgical processes where a support or scaffold is placed into the body during the healing process of bones, eliminating the need for a second surgery to remove the implant and lowering the cost and discomfort of a second surgery. They can also be designed to release drugs or other therapeutic agents over time. For these reasons, such alloys require particular mechanical, chemical, physical, and biological properties. The non-degradable alloys should not react with the body for extended implanting times.
AM is highly dependent on the type, composition, structure, and shape of the materials available for printing using a specific technique. This means that various products can be printed, such as hollow parts, parts with internal structures, parts made of porous or cellular structures, like tissues or cells for bioprinting, scaffolds with lattice structures, bones with dense internal networks, and parts with intricate and complex geometries. A wide range of materials can be printed, including plastic filaments, metallic powder, ceramics, hydrogels, carbon fibre, composites, wood, rubber, and even living cells.
While metallic, polymeric, and ceramic materials have already been produced using AM, additional research is still required to meet the expanding demands of AM, especially for metallic materials. Materials and techniques still have tremendous promise and scope for further improvement in the pharmaceutical, drug delivery, and bio-medicinal sectors. This issue aims to highlight the new advances in metallic materials and techniques of AM in medical fields, especially if case studies are available.
Keywords:
Metallic and nonmetallic materials, biodegradable materials, AM techniques, medical devices, biomedical applications, case studies
Important Note:
All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.