A review on mechanical metamaterials and additive manufacturing techniques for biomedical applications

Abstract

This review presents the design and experimental analysis of metamaterials with tunable properties for biomedical applications. Five different metamaterials, such as lightweight metamaterials, pattern transformation metamaterials, negative compressibility metamaterials, pentamode metamaterials and auxetic metamaterials, are discussed in detail with emphasis on their mechanical and biological features that are primarily applicable in the field of biomedical technology. Various indigenous structures of the metamaterials are carefully analysed for metamaterial design and their influence on mechanical performance is studied. Thus, this review comprehensively summarizes the different additive manufacturing techniques implemented for biomedical metamaterials and their influence on their mechanical properties. Finally, the mechanical properties and deformation mechanisms for different geometries and structures of all the above-mentioned metamaterials are analyzed.