A materials perspective on the design of damage-resilient artificial bones and bone implants through additive/advanced manufacturing

TL;DR

This paper reviews recent advances in additive manufacturing for creating biomimetic bone implants, emphasizing material design to improve mechanical strength and toughness to reduce failure rates.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of how advanced manufacturing techniques can be used to design more resilient, biomimetic bone implants from a materials perspective.

Findings

Additive manufacturing enables fabrication of biomimetic bone structures.

Material microstructure critically influences implant toughness.

Recent innovations improve implant mechanical performance.

Abstract

After more than five decades of research, the failure of bone implants is still an issue that becomes increasingly urgent to solve in our ageing population. Among the reasons for failure, catastrophic brittle fracture is one event that is directly related to the implant s material and fabrication and that deserves more attention. Indeed, clinically available implants pale at reproducing the hierarchical and heterogeneous microstructural organization of our natural bones, ultimately failing at reproducing their mechanical strength and toughness. Nevertheless, the recent advances in additive and advanced manufacturing open new horizons for the fabrication of biomimetic bone implants, challenging at the same time their characterization, testing and modelling. This critical review covers selected recent achievements in bone implant research from a materials standpoint and aims at deciphering some of the most urgent issues in this multidisciplinary field.