Shape/properties collaborative intelligent manufacturing of artificial bone scaffold: structural design and additive manufacturing process.

Abstract

Artificial bone graft stands out for avoiding limited source of autograft as well as susceptibility to infection of allograft, which makes it the current research hotspot in the field of bone defect repair. However, traditional design and manufacturing method cannot fabricate bone scaffold that well mimics complicate bone-like shape with interconnected porous structure and multiple properties akin to human natural bone. Additive manufacturing, which can achieve implant's tailored external contour and controllable fabrication of internal microporous structure, is able to form almost any shape of designed bone scaffold via the layer-by-layer process. As additive manufacturing is promising in building artificial bone scaffold, only combining excellent structural design with appropriate additive manufacturing process can produce bone scaffold with ideal biological and mechanical properties. In this article, we sum up and analyze state of art design and additive manufacturing methods for bone scaffold to realize shape/properties collaboratuve intelligent manufacturing. Scaffold design can be mainly classified to design based on unit cells and whole structure, while the basic additive manufacturing and 3D bioprinting are the recommended suitable additive manufacturing methods for bone scaffold fabrication. The challenges and future perspectives in additive manufactured bone scaffold are also discussed. .