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In the field of ener­gy, research is under­way to max­i­mize the effi­cien­cy of solar cells by inte­grat­ing microstruc­tures print­ed on flex­i­ble sub­strates. 4D print­ing will pro­mote the devel­op­ment of flex­i­ble and embed­ded elec­tron­ics as well as intel­li­gent sen­sors adapt­ed to the con­nect­ed city. In the field of bio­med­ical appli­ca­tions, stud­ies are under­way to be able to bio-print stents, organs, and intel­li­gent tis­sues. 4D print­ing is already a dri­ving force in flex­i­ble robot­ics for the fab­ri­ca­tion of ever small­er robots (mil­li-robots, micro-robots, nano-robots) capa­ble of work­ing in haz­ardous envi­ron­ments or mov­ing in con­fined envi­ron­ments, such as in the human body, to deliv­er a drug or to per­form micro-inva­sive oper­a­tions.

c) Ther­moac­tive Eif­fel Tow­er print­ed in 4D with shape mem­o­ry poly­mers. b) Syn­thet­ic bio-inspired fab­ric formed from a set of 4D print­ed micro­droplets. This requires the devel­op­ment of mul­ti-mate­r­i­al print­ers and spe­cif­ic codes to adapt them to the mate­ri­als used and the stim­uli introduced.įig­ure 1: a) Self-assem­bly of a trun­cat­ed octa­he­dron print­ed in 4D evap­o­rat­ing in liq­uid medi­um. That is to say: com­posed of one or more active mate­ri­als inter­spersed with pas­sive ele­ments. This com­plex prob­lem requires ad hoc solu­tions where the desired behav­iour is treat­ed as an input vari­able, while the action (the vox­el dis­tri­b­u­tion) is treat­ed as an out­put variable.įinal­ly, an object print­ed in 4D can be het­ero­ge­neous. Pro­gram­ming an object with print­ed behav­iour in 4D there­fore means mod­el­ling and sim­u­lat­ing the opti­mal dis­tri­b­u­tion of vox­els so that the appli­ca­tion of a stim­u­lus cor­re­sponds to a deter­min­is­tic effect. In par­al­lel with com­put­er sci­ence, if a “bit” is the basic unit of pro­gram­ming, the vox­el (a con­trac­tion of the words vol­ume and ele­ment) is the ele­men­tary vol­ume that stores the physical/chemical/biological infor­ma­tion of an active mate­r­i­al in 4D print­ing. As well as devel­op method­ol­o­gy based on the tri­ad of design-mod­el­ling-sim­u­la­tion so that the print­ed object responds in an appro­pri­ate way to exter­nal stimuli. Hence, such oper­a­tions require work to cor­rect­ly com­bine mate­r­i­al, process­es, and func­tion­al­i­ties. How­ev­er, the mate­r­i­al is not the only cri­te­ri­on to con­sid­er, it is also nec­es­sary to be able to design and cre­ate an object with a desired behav­iour. This is why part of the research is focused on the pos­si­bil­i­ty of extend­ing the set of print­able mate­ri­als to ceram­ic and metal­lic mate­ri­als, but also to bio­log­i­cal and com­pos­ite materials. This is both the great­est asset and the biggest hur­dle to its devel­op­ment, as research in this area is still in its infan­cy and few smart, print­able mate­ri­als are cur­rent­ly avail­able (most­ly poly­mers). The con­ver­gence of these three areas of research – 3D print­ing, pro­gram­ma­ble mate­ri­als and smart mate­ri­als – led to the 4D rev­o­lu­tion 3.Ĭlear­ly, at the heart of this new tech­nol­o­gy are smart mate­ri­als. Now, the sto­ry cross­es paths with that of intel­li­gent mate­ri­als mean­ing mate­ri­als with prop­er­ties that can be acti­vat­ed or mod­i­fied by exter­nal stim­uli either phys­i­cal (elec­tric field, mag­net­ic field, light, tem­per­a­ture, vibra­tions), chem­i­cal (PH, pho­to­chem­istry) or bio­log­i­cal (glu­cose, enzymes, biomolecules).įinal­ly, in 2013, Sky­lar Tib­bits, founder of the Self-assem­bly lab at MIT, dur­ing his speech at a TedX con­fer­ence, pro­posed using smart mate­ri­als in 3D print­ing process­es to pro­duce pro­gram­ma­ble objects, and pro­posed the name “4D print­ing” for this new tech­nol­o­gy. This idea, by cross-fer­til­i­sa­tion, spread to oth­er dis­ci­plines, until in 2005 the DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) launched a mul­ti-year project with the enti­tled “Real­iz­ing Pro­gram­ma­ble Mat­ter”, focus­ing on mod­u­lar robot­ics, pro­gram­ming assem­blies and nano­ma­te­ri­als 2.

In 1991, Tof­foli and Mar­go­lus, two com­put­er sci­en­tists from MIT, intro­duced the term “pro­gram­ma­ble mat­ter” to describe a set of com­pu­ta­tion­al nodes arranged in a cer­tain space, which can com­mu­ni­cate with each oth­er only via first neigh­bours 1. Para­dox­i­cal­ly, the fas­ci­nat­ing hypoth­e­sis of being able to pro­gram mat­ter has pre­vi­ous­ly been intro­duced in anoth­er sci­en­tif­ic field.