Three-dimensional (3D) printing, or more formally Additive Manufacturing (AM), was introduced in the mid-80s and since then it has had a great impact on virtually all industry, market, and research areas, from automotive to healthcare, enabling the fabrication of complex structures with precise control on both internal and external geometries1-3. After about 30 years, in 2013, Tibbits et al.4 proposed the term “four-dimensional (4D) printing” to denote the fabrication via AM of structures with thecapability to shape transform over time, the “fourth dimension”, under a predefined stimulus.
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