Additive Manufacturing of Biomaterials
Résumé
The use of Additive Manufacturing (AM), also called 3D printing, has increased in recent years. These processes are applied in many different fields such as aerospace, motor vehicles, electronics, and medical fields among others. In particular, additive manufacturing has been used for the fabrication of biomaterials to create products for biomedical applications such as prototypes, implants, scaffolds for tissue engineering, models, or drug-delivery systems. Its versatility allows the personalization of the object to the specific needs of each patient based on anatomical data. Furthermore, AM enables the production of highly complex objects that can not be realized with traditional techniques such as subtractive manufacturing. Additive manufacturing is gaining in popularity thanks to its adaptability in terms of fabrication materials, such as polymers, metals or ceramics, depending on the needs of the application, as well as the fast transition from a numerical model to the final object. In the present review, we summarize additive manufacturing techniques used to create biomaterials focusing on their advantages and drawbacks and the reasons why they can be preferred to traditional ones. Some biomedical applications are presented for each technique.