Fused filament fabricated PEEK based polymer composites for orthopaedic implants: a review

Abstract Additive manufacturing has become a cutting-edge technique to produce biomaterials for various clinical applications. Recent investigations have shown their significance and highlighted their future requirements. Many additive manufacturing technologies are mostly related to manufacturing polyether ether ketone (PEEK) based implants. Among them, fused filament fabrication (FFF) or fused deposition modelling (FDM) is the preferred method. Specifically, FFF builds complex scaffolds for tissue engineering and customized implants, which are not achievable with traditional fabrication methods. PEEK is a rigid, tissue-compatible, lightweight polymer with good wear characteristics and a long implant life. In general, PEEK has many valuable properties and the potential to solve many medical problems, especially orthopaedic implantation. This paper provides a brief study that gives an overview of PEEK-based biomaterials for FFF-based orthopaedic procedures, materials evolution, recent advancements, and the current research progress is also addressed systematically.