Application of Smart 3D Printing Materials for Tissue Engineering

Smart materials are specifically designed materials that could serve a wide range of purposes, in which they are able to respond to stimuli in their surroundings, i.e. pressure, temperature, pH, electric field, and magnetic field, etc. Hydrogels are networks of hydrophilic polymers that are formed by crosslinking, in which a large quantity of water is trapped inside the network structure, leading to gels whose fluidity is between that of solids and liquids. The crosslinking process can be classified into two types depending on how the crosslinks form, namely chemical crosslinking and physical crosslinking. The hydrogels are of excellent biocompatibility because of the high water content, and therefore are commonly used for biomedical applications including tissue engineering, as drug carriers, or 3D printing inks. there has been very little research on the applications of shape-memory polymers combined with 3D printing techniques in the biomedical field.Nonetheless, the combination has both the advantages of 3D printing and shape-memory polymers. customized artificial scaffolds for bones, nerve guidance conduits, or artificial scaffolds for muscles fabricated by 3D printing may facilitate tissue regeneration. In this study , these scaffolds have been investigated

Keywords:

3D Printing , smart materials , Tissue engineering , hydrogels.