Shape/properties collaborative intelligent manufacturing of artificial bone scaffold: structural design and additive manufacturing process

Artificial bone graft stands out for avoiding limited source of autograft as well as susceptibility toinfection of allograft, which makes it a current research hotspot in the field of bone defect repair.However, traditional design and manufacturing method cannot fabricate bone scaffold that wellmimics complicated bone-like shape with interconnected porous structure and multiple propertiesakin to human natural bone. Additive manufacturing, which can achieve implant's tailoredexternal contour and controllable fabrication of internal microporous structure, is able to formalmost any shape of designed bone scaffold via layer-by-layer process. As additive manufacturing ispromising in building artificial bone scaffold, only combining excellent structural design withappropriate additive manufacturing process can produce bone scaffold with ideal biological andmechanical properties. In this article, we sum up and analyze state of art design and additivemanufacturing methods for bone scaffold to realize shape/properties collaborative intelligentmanufacturing. Scaffold design can be mainly classified into design based on unit cells and wholestructure, while basic additive manufacturing and 3D bioprinting are the recommended suitableadditive manufacturing methods for bone scaffold fabrication. The challenges and futureperspectives in additive manufactured bone scaffold are also discussed