Designing with Printed Responsive Biomaterials: A Review

This review explores additive manufacturing (AM) strategies across disciplines for designing with responsive biomaterials and presents a vision of how printed responsive biomaterials (PRBs) can be integrated into everyday objects and buildings to enhance environmental and human health. Advancements in biomaterials science, biological materials manufacturing, synthetic biology, biomedical engineering, bio design, and living architecture are ushering in a new era characterized by multisensory interactions within everyday products and built environments. The material systems developed in recent research demonstrate the ability to interact with their environments through biological, chemical, or physical processes, yielding functionalities desirable in daily-use products. These include self-healing, health diagnostics, pathogen neutralization, adjustable stiffness, strain detection, threat visualization, shapeshifting, toxin trapping, stress correction, waste processing, and energy generation. Here we review examples of AM of biobased environmentally interactive materials using biopolymer composites, electrochemical and resistive devices, active molecules, bio sensors, living cells, spores, or cell-free sites, resulting in genetically active, and physical and chemical interactive systems. We highlight their robustness and evaluate their potential for scaling up into designs and architectures on Earth and beyond.