A review on the recent progress, opportunities, and challenges of 4D printing and bioprinting in regenerative medicine
Parvin Pourmasoumi, Armaghan Moghaddam, Saba Nemati Mahand, Fatemeh Heidari, Zahra Salehi Moghaddam, Mohammad Arjmand, Ines Kühnert, Benjamin Kruppke, Hans‐Peter Wiesmann, Hossein Ali Khonakdar
Abstract
Four-dimensional (4 D) printing is a novel emerging technology, which can be defined as the ability of 3 D printed materials to change their form and functions. The term 'time' is added to 3 D printing as the fourth dimension, in which materials can respond to a stimulus after finishing the manufacturing process. 4 D printing provides more versatility in terms of size, shape, and structure after printing the construct. Complex material programmability, multi-material printing, and precise structure design are the essential requirements of 4 D printing systems. The utilization of stimuli-responsive polymers has increasingly taken the place of cell traction force-dependent methods and manual folding, offering a more advanced technique to affect a construct's adjusted shape transformation. The present review highlights the concept of 4 D printing and the responsive bioinks used in 4 D printing, such as water-responsive, pH-responsive, thermo-responsive, and light-responsive materials used in tissue regeneration. Cell traction force methods are described as well. Finally, this paper aims to introduce the limitations and future trends of 4 D printing in biomedical applications based on selected key references from the last decade.