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The overview describes the synergy between biological sciences and cellular structures processed by additive manufacturing to elucidate the significance of cellular structured implants in eliminating stress shielding and in meeting the bio-mechanical property requirements of elastic modulus, impact resistance, and fatigue strength in conjunction with the biological functionality. The convergence of additive manufacturing, computer-aided design, and structure-property relationships is envisaged to provide the solution to the current day challenges in the biomedical arena. The traditional methods of fabrication of biomedical devices including casting and mechanical forming have limitations because of the mismatch in micro/microstructure, mechanical, and physical properties with the host site. Additive manufacturing of cellular structured alloys via electron beam melting and laser powder bed fusion has benefits of fabricating patient-specific design that is obtained from the computed tomography scan of the defect site. The discussion in the overview consists of two aspects - the first one describes the underlying reason that motivated 3D printing of implants from the perspective of minimising stress shielding together with the mechanical property requirements, where the mechanical properties of cellular structured implants depend on the cellular architecture and percentage cellular porosity. The second aspect focuses on the biological response of cellular structured devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Laser-induced periodic surface structures (LIPSS) on biomedical stainless steel in air and water were systematically studied. The LIPSS exhibit in-plane curves near the ripple centres in the individual tracks of laser scan and the curving was opposite to the laser scan direction. The collective in-plane curving of LIPSS, a hitherto unknown feature for single train pulsed laser processing, is attributed to the accumulative effect of laser ablation and redeposition, which modifies the interference between the surface scattered wave and the incident laser beam. Combinations of media, scan-speed, and laser fluence, showed that the roughness can be increased by slowing the scan-speed. Ripples fabricated in the flowing water with slow scan-speed and high laser power are helpful for the hydrophilicity of biomaterials. A contact angle as low as 47.00 ± 9.35° is obtained towards high surface hydrophilicity. The results provide new insights on LIPSS about their formation and biomedical applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]