4D Printing Materials

In 1984, additive manufacturing was born in France, and six weeks later in the USA. In 2012/2013, adding the creation of objects by additive manufacturing containing "active" material that evolves in shape or functionality when stimulated by suitable energy, the concept of 4D printing emerged, timidly at the University of Bath in the UK and then at MIT in the USA. The latest promoters of this technology are talking about a breakthrough of the same magnitude as 3D. What they failed to grasp at the time was that the transition from 3 to 4D would lead to new concepts of hyperobjects and complexity...

These "objects" are complex entities with vast temporal and spatial dimensions that have an impact on the way we think. To "catch" them, we need to focus our attention on fragments. Our representation of the world is limited and, as a result, we have little capacity to understand and/or master observed (or simply glimpsed) phenomena in the field, through small slices of scientific knowledge.

In this immense space to be explored, it is possible to draw on the knowledge acquired since 1984 on additive manufacturing, but it is naturally advantageous to know what the main elements constituting 4D manufacturing are made up of: materials, energy stimuli, interactions, state of the cultural environment, alternative technologies, epistemology, and so on. At the same time, we need to address the issue of non-transfer from the current scientific context (lacking an in-depth "roadmap") on the one hand, and a lack of transfer to society on the other. Perhaps, then, we need to channel academic enthusiasm (+44% growth in the number of annual publications) via new, usable active materials and the use of new concepts that accept reliable 4D solutions, but rely on less rigid engineering sciences that allow us to move from the complex to determinism...

Active materials play an eminent role in the development of this technology in socio-economic circles, and will form an important part of this article. However, these materials, whether pure and active or a combination of active and passive, are just one part - albeit an essential one - of a somewhat larger whole, such as that observed in any slightly complicated object, where each element must be integrated to enable the technical system to function. Would it be acceptable to create a 4D object of a given size with a stimulation device a thousand times larger? This brings us back to the notion of the hyperobject. Each of the contributors to the subject of controlled interactions between materials and energy stimulations in the 4D field is itself a hyperobject, with its own coherence, with a small "piece" of its scientificity and validated technical and methodological knowledge. To move forward, we need to master,...