Artificial Intelligence-Empowered 3D and 4D Printing Technologies toward Smarter Biomedical Materials and Approaches

Abstract

In the last decades, 3D printing has played a crucial role as an innovative technology for tissue and organ fabrication, patient-specific orthoses, drug delivery, and surgical planning. However, biomedical materials used for 3D printing are usually static and unable to dynamically respond or transform within the internal environment of the body. These materials are fabricated ex situ, which involves first printing on a planar substrate and then deploying it to the target surface, thus resulting in a possible mismatch between the printed part and the target surfaces. The emergence of 4D printing addresses some of these drawbacks, opening an attractive path for the biomedical sector. By preprogramming smart materials, 4D printing is able to manufacture structures that dynamically respond to external stimuli. Despite these potentials, 4D printed dynamic materials are still in their infancy of development. The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) could push these technologies forward enlarging their applicability, boosting the design space of smart materials by selecting promising ones with desired architectures, properties, and functions, reducing the time to manufacturing, and allowing the in situ printing directly on target surfaces achieving high-fidelity of human body micro-structures. In this review, an overview of 4D printing as a fascinating tool for designing advanced smart materials is provided. Then will be discussed the recent progress in AI-empowered 3D and 4D printing with open-loop and closed-loop methods, in particular regarding shape-morphing 4D-responsive materials, printing on moving targets, and surgical robots for in situ printing. Lastly, an outlook on 5D printing is given as an advanced future technique, in which AI will assume the role of the fifth dimension to empower the effectiveness of 3D and 4D printing for developing intelligent systems in the biomedical sector and beyond.

Review of Intelligence for Additive and Subtractive Manufacturing: Current Status and Future Prospects

“…The stimulus-responsive materials, interaction mechanisms and mathematical modelling will be required in 4D printing for the prediction of the shape-shifting as a function of time [ 236 ]. Moreover, bio-medical applications, such as patient-specific organs fabricated by 3D/4D printing are typically manufactured ex-situ and then transferred to the human body with limited “real-time knowledge” of the target geometry renders mismatch between the printed part and target surfaces [ 237 ]. This problem could be addressed by using an ML algorithm to predict the most likely behavior of a phenomenon of 3D- and 4D printing [ 238 ].…”

“…However, obtaining a large dataset for training the ML algorithm is challenging for prospective organ systems [ 239 ]. Therefore, intelligent 3D- and 4D printing [ 240 ] are expected to perform the necessary step for the development of personalized anatomical models, as shown in Figure 28 c [ 237 ].…”

“… Four-dimensional printing material demonstration ( a ) of the transition between the gripper shape with programming and heating environment [ 235 ]; ( b ) thermo-responsive and time-lapsed images of a gripper grabbing an object [ 235 ]; and ( c ) possible uses of AI in 3D- and 4D printing applications [ 237 ]. …”

Soft robotics towards sustainable development goals and climate actions

“…The authors envisage for future MIS applications a 5D-printed soft robot with shape-shifting capabilities that can integrate multifunctional and stimuli-responsive materials together with sensors, actuators, and artificial intelligence (AI)-driven control systems in a single manufacturing process (Pugliese and Regondi, 2022). We conceptualize the manufacturing of a biocompatible and biodegradable soft robot made of hydrogel material that can be programmed to change stiffness and shape in response to specific stimuli, such as temperature or pH.…”

Fabrication of Chiral 3D Microstructure Using Tightly Focused Multiramp Helico-Conical Optical Beams

“…Interest in three-dimensional (3D) micromachining is driven by many advanced applications in different fields, such as materials science [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ], biology [ 5 ], and photonics [ 6 , 7 , 8 ]. Many research groups have made great efforts in developing and improving direct writing techniques that can produce 3D objects with a high spatial fidelity and resolution.…”