3D Printing metamaterials towards tissue engineering

The rapid growth and disruptive potentials of three-dimensional (3D) printing demand further research for addressing fundamental fabrication concepts and enabling engineers to realize the capabilities of 3D printing technologies. There is a trend to use these capabilities to develop materials that derive some of their properties via their structural organization rather than their intrinsic constituents, sometimes referred to as mechanical metamaterials. Such materials show qualitatively different mechanical behaviors despite using the same material composition, such as ultra-lightweight, super-elastic, and auxetic structures. In this work, we review current advancements in the design and fabrication of multi-scale advanced structures with properties heretofore unseen in well-established materials. We classify the fabrication methods as conventional methods, additive manufacturing techniques, and 4D printing. Following a comprehensive comparison of different fabrication methods, we suggest some guidelines on the selection of fabrication parameters to construct meta-biomaterials for tissue engineering. The parameters include multi-material capacity, fabrication resolution, prototyping speed, and biological compatibility.