Additive Manufacturing of Functionalized Material Systems for Medical Applications: Potentials and Challenges in Additive Manufacturing

Additive manufacturing technologies represent the disruptive technologies of this century, since they offer an unprecedented degree of geometrical freedom, material diversity and functionalizability. As no tools are required, these components can be provided within a short period of time. Especially with respect to emerging medical applications, these advantages embed enormous potentials for the design of locally gradable, patient-individualizable parts and temperature-adapted processing strategies for the incorporation of pharmaceuticals into geometrically integrated implants. For these purposes, the processing of composite materials is associated with challenging process requirements or even process adaptions that result in specific material-process interactions. Within this contribution, the material-process interactions of various additive manufacturing technologies, such as powder bed fusion, fused filament and fused granulate fabrication are highlighted with respect to in body and outer body medical applications. Therefore, process-specific boundary conditions and potentials are highlighted for the fabrication of functionalized parts with respect to their applicability for medical use-cases, such as drug delivery applications, osteosynthesis implants and patient-matched prostheses and orthoses. In addition, existing process limitations are displayed with respect to promising solutions that are currently under development. These examples highlight the potentials of additive manufacturing for future research in the field of medical engineering.