Cited by 587Additive Manufacturing and 3D Printing TechnologiesInnovations in Concrete and Construction Materials3D Printing in Biomedical Research

3D/4D Printing of Polymers: Fused Deposition Modelling (FDM), Selective Laser Sintering (SLS), and Stereolithography (SLA)

Open access
Kafle, Abishek, Luis, Eric, Silwal, Raman, Pan, Houwen Matthew, Shrestha, Pratisthit Lal, Bastola, Anil Kumar·2021·Polymers

Abstract

Additive manufacturing (AM) or 3D printing is a digital manufacturing process and offers virtually limitless opportunities to develop structures/objects by tailoring material composition, processing conditions, and geometry technically at every point in an object. In this review, we present three different early adopted, however, widely used, polymer-based 3D printing processes; fused deposition modelling (FDM), selective laser sintering (SLS), and stereolithography (SLA) to create polymeric parts. The main aim of this review is to offer a comparative overview by correlating polymer material-process-properties for three different 3D printing techniques. Moreover, the advanced material-process requirements towards 4D printing via these print methods taking an example of magneto-active polymers is covered. Overall, this review highlights different aspects of these printing methods and serves as a guide to select a suitable print material and 3D print technique for the targeted polymeric material-based applications and also discusses the implementation practices towards 4D printing of polymer-based systems with a current state-of-the-art approach.

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Crossref · 10.3390/polym13183101

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  • SLS is suitable for the fabrication of scaffolds with complex geometric shapes and is especially suitable for bone tissue scaffolds because of its high mechanical strength and porosity.

    “This method is suitable for the fabrication of scaffolds with complex geometric shapes, and is especially suitable for the construction of bone tissue scaffolds because of its high mechanical strength and porosity [105, 106].”

    From Application of PLCL as a biodegradable polymer in biomedical engineering (2026) · cites this paper as [105]

    The Printing Process section (p. unavailable) describes how SLS produces objects, and the Properties of Printed Parts section (p. unavailable) discusses strength varying with print conditions. Searches for scaffolds, bone tissue, porosity, and complex geometries found no passage stating that SLS is suitable for complex-shaped scaffolds or especially suitable for bone scaffolds because of high strength and porosity. (LLM, conf=0.75)

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Research works printed but not linked: 10

  1. [85]Davoudinejad A. Chapter 5—Vat photopolymerization methods in additive manufacturing Handbooks in Advanced Manufacturing Pou J. Riveiro A. Davim J.P.B.T.-A.M. Elsevier Amsterdam, The Netherlands 2021 159 181 978-0-12-818411-0
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Authors
Kafle, A., Luis, E., Silwal, R., Pan, H. M., Shrestha, P. L., & Bastola, A. K.
Affiliations
  • Kathmandu University (NP)
  • Macau University of Science and Technology (MO)
  • Nanyang Technological University (SG)
  • University of Nottingham (GB)
Corresponding author
  • Shrestha, Pratisthit Lal
  • Bastola, Anil Kumar
Venue
Polymers
Publisher
MDPI AG
Published
2021-09-15
Volume
13
Issue
18
Pages
3101
ISSN
2073-4360 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W3200088187
Cited by
587
References
227
Citations by year
2026: 107 · 2025: 165 · 2024: 158 · 2023: 98 · 2022: 51 · 2021: 8
FWCI
5.34
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Polymers (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, other-oa)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • Cronfa (Swansea University) (acceptedVersion)
  • DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
Topics
  • Physical Sciences › Engineering › Automotive Engineering › Additive Manufacturing and 3D Printing Technologies
  • Physical Sciences › Engineering › Building and Construction › Innovations in Concrete and Construction Materials
  • Physical Sciences › Engineering › Biomedical Engineering › 3D Printing in Biomedical Research
Keywords
3D printing, 4D printing, fused deposition modeling, selective laser sintering, stereolithography, shape-changing polymers

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