Additive manufacturing of hydroxyapatite and its composite materials: A review

Abstract

Hydroxyapatite (HA) is a promising biomaterial for tissue engineering scaffolds due to its similar performance and composition to natural bone. However, the brittleness and poor toughness of pure HA limit its clinical application. Therefore, a lot of HA composites have been prepared to improve their mechanical performance. Fabricating complex and customized tissue engineering HA scaffolds have a very high requirement for manufacturing processes. It is difficult to fabricate ideal HA porous structures for artificial bone implants using traditional manufacturing processes, such as plasma spraying–sintering, and injection forming. Additive manufacturing (AM) could make three-dimensional physical parts with complex structures directly from computer-aided-design (CAD) models in a layer-by-layer way, and therefore show unique advantages in fabricating bone tissue engineering scaffolds with complex external shape and internal microporous structures. This paper reviews the state of the art for the preparation and AM process of HA and its composite materials, and raises the prospects for this research field.