Synergizing Algorithmic Design, Photoclick Chemistry and Multi-Material Volumetric Printing for Accelerating Complex Shape Engineering

The field of biomedical design and manufacturing has been rapidly evolving, with implants and grafts featuring complex 3D design constraints and materials distributions. By combining a new coding-based design and modeling approach with high-throughput volumetric printing, a new approach is demonstrated to transform the way complex shapes are designed and fabricated for biomedical applications. Here, an algorithmic voxel-based approach is used that can rapidly generate a large design library of porous structures, auxetic meshes and cylinders, or perfusable constructs. By deploying finite cell modeling within the algorithmic design framework, large arrays of selected auxetic designs can be computationally modeled. Finally, the design schemes are used in conjunction with new approaches for multi-material volumetric printing based on thiol-ene photoclick chemistry to rapidly fabricate complex heterogeneous shapes. Collectively, the new design, modeling and fabrication techniques can be used toward a wide spectrum of products such as actuators, biomedical implants and grafts, or tissue and disease models.

Automated summary

The field of biomedical design and manufacturing is rapidly advancing with the development of new coding-based design and modeling approaches and high-throughput volumetric printing. This new approach revolutionizes the process of designing and fabricating complex shapes for biomedical applications by utilizing algorithmic voxel-based design and finite cell modeling. Moreover, new techniques for multi-material volumetric printing based on thiol-ene photoclick chemistry enable the rapid fabrication of complex heterogeneous shapes. These advancements have a wide range of potential applications in products such as actuators, biomedical implants and grafts, and tissue and disease models.