15 - Applications and scope of nanotechnology in additive manufacturing for healthcare industry

Abstract

In the healthcare industry, additive manufacturing (AM) has a very high potential to make use of personalized and customized medical applications. In the modern industrial revolution, that is, (Industry 4.0), AM is one of the innovative technologies that builds items from the bottom up by adding material one cross-sectional layer at a time which contribute to the expected market growth of USD 9.87 billion by 2030 with 22% CAGR between the period 2022 to 2030 in healthcare industry. AM is an encouraging and optimistic technology for the healthcare industry due to lots of potential to manufacture complex structures with significant advantages like environmental sustainability and dimensional freedom. Despite that material used in AM is not strong due to the nonisotropic reason by layer-by-layer approach. By consideration of the above issue, nanomaterials and related technology will help improve the thermal and electrochemical properties of the material. At present, nanotechnology is promisingly used in interdisciplinary domains because of its large surface area-to-volume ratio. The nanomaterial possesses very special features that enhance the properties of materials which is required for the healthcare industry. However, there is a challenge to prepare cost-effective nanomaterials for the healthcare sector. The intention of writing this article is to summarize the research done in the application of the healthcare industry through AM and highlight its success in this field. Also, this article gives a glance at the wide scope of integration of nanotechnology in AM in the biomedical and healthcare industries. The main finding of this article is to give a glance at challenges like environment stability, cost, disposal of nanocomposites, controlling of different process parameters, and synthesis methods during the incorporation of nanoparticles in AM.