Of the seven additive manufacturing (AM) processes, this article focuses on the vat photopolymerization, or simply vat polymerization, process, while briefly discussing the other six AM processes. Vat polymerization and its characteristics, AM applications in medical fields, and the regulatory challenges of vat polymerization-based bioprinting are presented.

The article presents an in-depth discussion on the various additive manufacturing techniques such as binder jetting, directed-energy deposition, material extrusion, material jetting, powder-bed fusion, sheet lamination, and vat polymerization processes. This article then discusses the different critical material aspects of additively manufactured medical devices, beginning with the preprinting phase (material consistency and recycling), the printing phase (build orientation), and the postprinting phase (part evaluation, biocompatibility, and sterilization) with supporting materials.

Additive manufacturing (AM) techniques include powder-bed fusion (PBF), directed-energy deposition, binder jetting (BJ), extrusion-based desktop, vat photopolymerization, material jetting, and sheet lamination. The development of suitable powders for AM is a challenging task because of critical design parameters including chemical composition, flowability of powders, and melt surface tension. This article explains the fabrication methods of metal and novel alloy powders for medical applications. The development of zirconium alloy powder for laser-PBF is introduced as a case study.

Powder-bed fusion (PBF) is a group of additive manufacturing (AM) processes that includes selective laser sintering, selective laser melting, and electron beam melting. This article explains the processes and parameters of PBF systems that are used for biomedical applications. It also presents the desirable properties of biomedical devices and the advantages of using PBF systems for biomedical applications.

Additive manufacturing (AM), or three-dimensional (3D) printing, has been widely used for biomedical devices due to its higher freedom of design and its capability for mass customization. Additive manufacturing can be broadly classified into seven categories: binder jetting, directed energy deposition (DED), material extrusion, material jetting, powder-bed fusion (PBF), sheet lamination, and vat photopolymerization. Due to their capability for manufacturing high-quality parts that are fully dense, PBF and DED are the most widely used groups of AM techniques in processing metals directly. In this article, the processing of titanium and its alloys by PBF and DED is described, with a specific focus on their use in biomedical devices. The article then covers the density and mechanical properties of both commercially pure titanium and titanium-aluminum-vanadium alloy. Lastly, the challenges and potential of using new titanium-base materials are discussed.

Three-dimensional plotting of biomaterials (also known as bioprinting) has been a major milestone for scientists and engineers working in nanobiotechnology, nanoscience, and nanomedicine. It is typically classified into two major categories, depending on the plotting principle, as contact and noncontact techniques. This article focuses on the working principles of contact and noncontact printing methods along with their advantages, disadvantages, applications, and challenges. Contact printing methods include micro-plotter, pen printing, screen printing, nanoimprint printing, flexography printing, and gravure printing. Noncontact printing methods include extrusion printing, droplet printing, laser-based polymerization, and laser-based cell transfer. The wide variety of printable biomaterials, such as DNA, peptides, proteins, lipids, and cells, also are discussed.

This article begins with a description of extrusion-based bioprinting for tissue scaffold fabrication. It also examines various extrusion-based bioprinting processes and related tissue scaffolding strategies, presents the selection criteria of various bioinks with various polymers and their printed scaffolds for applications in tissue engineering and regenerative medicines, and provides future research recommendations to address the shortcomings and issues found in current extrusion-based bioprinting processes.

This article discusses alginate/gelatin-based bioinks in 3D bioprinting applications, providing a summary of the most relevant previous work in the field. It presents advanced compositions to enhance functionality and/or optimize hydrogels for 3D bioprinting. The article discusses advanced printing techniques for alginate/gelatin-based bioinks.

Due to its layer-by-layer process, 3D printing enables the formation of complex geometries using multiple materials. Three-dimensional printing for bone tissue engineering is called bioprinting and refers to the use of material-transfer processes for patterning and assembling biologically relevant materials, molecules, cells, tissues, and biodegradable biomaterials with a prescribed organization to accomplish one or more biological functions. Currently, 3D bioprinting constructs can be classified into two categories: acellular and cellular. This article introduces and discusses these two approaches based on the suitable materials for these constructs and the fabrication processes used to manufacture them. The materials are grouped into polymers, metals, and hydrogels. The article also summarizes the commonly used 3D printing techniques for these materials, as well as cell types used for various applications. Lastly, current challenges in tissue engineering are discussed.

Additive manufacturing (AM), or three-dimensional (3D) printing, is a class of manufacturing processes that create the desired geometries of an object, or an assembly of objects, layer by layer or volumetrically. AM has been used extensively for manufacturing medical devices, due to its versatility to satisfy the specific needs of an intended medical field for the product/device. This article provides a comprehensive review of AM in medical devices by the medical specialty panels of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Code of Federal Regulations, Parts 862 to 892, including anesthesiology, ear and nose, general hospital, ophthalmic, plastic surgery, radiology, cardiovascular, orthopedic, dental, neurology, gynecology, obstetrics, physical medicine, urology, toxicology, and pathology. It is classified under these panels, and critical reviews and future outlooks are provided. The application of AM to fabricate medical devices in each panel is reviewed; lastly, a comparison is provided to reveal relevant gaps in each medical field.

Vat polymerization is a form of three-dimensional (3D) printing. Historically, it is the oldest additive manufacturing technique, with the development of stereolithography apparatus (SLA) by Charles Hull in 1986. This article outlines the various forms of vat polymerization techniques used for biomedical applications. Due to the complex nature of this printing process, many key print parameters and material properties need to be considered to ensure a successful print. These influential parameters are addressed throughout the article to inform the reader of the considerations that should be taken when using the vat polymerization technique. The article provides information on vat polymerization printer setup, the photo-cross-linking mechanism, and considerations using vat polymerization. In addition, it outlines and discusses the advancements of vat polymerization in the biomedical industry.

According to International Organization for Standardization (ISO)/ASTM International 52900, additive manufacturing (AM) can be classified into material extrusion, material jetting, vat photo polymerization, binder jetting, sheet lamination, powder-bed fusion (PBF), and directed-energy deposition. This article discusses the processes involved in polymer powder 3D printing using laser fusion/ sintering and fusing agents and energy, as well as the thermally fused PBF. It provides information on polymer powder parameters and modeling, the powder-handling system, powder characterization, the flowability of powder feedstock, and polymer part characteristics. The article describes the types of polymers in PBF, the processes involved in powder recycling, and the prospects of PBF in AM. In addition, the biomedical application of polyether ether ketone (PEEK) is also covered.

Additive manufacturing (AM) technologies print three-dimensional (3D) parts through layer-by-layer deposition based on the digital input provided by a computer-aided design file. This article focuses on the binder jet printing process, common biomaterials used in this AM technique, and the clinical applications relevant to these systems. It reviews the challenges and future directions of binder-jetting-based 3D printing.

Hydroxyapatite (HA) is one of the most popular materials in tissue scaffold engineering due to its similarity to the nature of human bone; it accounts for more than half of the total weight of the latter. Selective laser sintering (SLS) is an additive manufacturing method that is used in producing tissue engineering parts from HA feedstocks. This article provides a brief overview of the process itself, along with a detailed review of HA-based tissue engineering applications using SLS. Discussion on the various polymer composites is presented. A detailed overview of selected publications on HA-based SLS studies is listed, which provides insight regarding technical aspects of processing HA powder feedstocks.

Calcium phosphates react to form more stable salts in aqueous solutions. This phenomenon has been applied to the solidification process for the dental and medical cement calcium phosphate cement, which consists of multiple phases of calcium phosphates and calcium salts; solidification occurs by the formation of hydroxyapatite. Dicalcium phosphate consists of crystal water along with anhydrous and dihydrate salts. This article summarizes research achievements regarding dicalcium phosphate dihydrate (DCPD) production with controlled morphology and reactivity, including effects of an additive and of production conditions on precipitation. It also summarizes achievements made in the hybridization of nano-apatite onto DCPD particles.

This article focuses on the directed-energy deposition (DED) additive manufacturing (AM) technique of biomedical alloys. First, it provides an overview of the DED process. This is followed by a section describing the design and development of the multiphysics computational modeling of the layer-by-layer fusion-based DED process. A brief overview of the primary governing equations, boundary conditions, and numerical methods prescribed for modeling laser-based metal AM is then presented. Next, the article discusses fundamental concepts related to laser surface melting and laser-assisted bioceramic coatings/composites on implant surfaces, with particular examples related to biomedical magnesium and titanium alloys. It then provides a review of the processes involved in DED of biomedical stainless steels, Co-Cr-Mo alloys, and biomedical titanium alloys. Further, the article covers novel applications of DED for titanium-base biomedical implants. It concludes with a section on the forecast of DED in biomedical applications.

Metallic alloys that are typically used for medical purposes include stainless steels, Ti-6Al-4V, and Co-Cr-Mo. This article discusses the relative merits of each of these alloys. The utilization of stainless steels in the biomedical industry, especially in relation to the additive manufacturing (AM) process, is the main focus of this article. The characteristics of various stainless steels are described subsequently, and the categories that are of relevance to the biomedical industry are identified. The types of stainless steels covered are austenitic, ferritic, martensitic, duplex, and precipitation-hardened stainless steels. The article discusses the potential benefits of AM for biomedical devices. It describes the types of AM processes for stainless steels, namely binder jet, directed-energy deposition, and laser powder-bed fusion. The article reviews the AM of austenitic, martensitic, and PH stainless steels for biomedical applications. In addition, the challenges and obstacles to the clinical use of AM parts are covered.

This article discusses some of the additive manufacturing (AM) based fabrication of alloys and their respective mechanical, electrochemical, and in vivo performance. Firstly, it briefly discusses the three AM techniques that are most commonly used in the fabrication of metallic biomedical-based devices: binder jetting, powder-bed fusion, and directed-energy deposition. The article then characterizes the electrochemical properties of additive-manufactured/processed cobalt-chromium alloys. This is followed by sections providing an evaluation of the biological response to CoCr alloys in terms of the material and 3D printing fabrication. Discussion on the biological response as a function of direct cellular activity on the surface of CoCr alloys in static conditions (in vitro), in dynamic physiological conditions (in vivo), and in computer-simulated conditions (in silico) are further discussed in detail. Finally, the article provides information on the qualification and certification of AM-processed medical devices.

Additive manufacturing, or three-dimensional printing technologies, for biomedical applications is rather different from other engineering components, particularly for biomedical implants that are intended to be used within the human body. This article contains two sections: "Design and Manufacturing Considerations of 3D-Printed, Commercially Pure Titanium and Titanium Alloy-Based Orthopedic Implants" and "Device Testing Considerations Following FDA Guidance" for additive-manufactured medical devices. These are further subdivided into five major focus areas: materials; design, printing, printing characteristics and parameters as well as postprinting validation; removal of the many manufacturing material residues and sterilization; physical, chemical, and mechanical assessments of the final devices; and biological considerations of all the final devices including biocompatibility.

Bioprinting has been advancing in the field of tissue engineering as the process for fabricating scaffolds, making use of additive manufacturing technologies. In situ bioprinting (also termed intraoperative bioprinting) is a promising solution to address the limitations of conventional bioprinting approaches. This article discusses the main approaches and technologies for in situ bioprinting. It provides a brief overview of the bioprinting pipeline, highlighting possible solutions to improve currently used approaches. Additionally, case studies of in situ bioprinting are provided and in situ bioprinting future perspectives are discussed.