3D printed smart materials

Develop reconfigurable intelligent 3D printed metasurfaces to destroy tumors in a much more focused way -at the histological level- without damaging adjacent healthy tissues, thus achieving a much less aggressive treatment for people diagnosed with cancer. This is one of the goals of the Metasmart project.

Metasmart is an initiative led by the Valencian company DAS Photonics and in which researchers from the Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV) in Spain participate, together with AIMPLAS, ISTEC and the La Fe Health Research Institute (IIS La Fe). The project is financed by the Valencia Innovation Agency.

As explained by the Nanophotonic Technology Center (NTC) of the UPV, metasurfaces with artificial structures designed to manipulate waves of a different nature. “They are materials whose properties we can create on demand, which allows us, for example, to control acoustic waves or electromagnetic waves throughout the spectrum. Its potential is enormous, in multiple fields, such as biomedicine and, more specifically, in cancer therapies, but also in other sectors, such as telecommunications”, adds Carlos García Meca, research director at DAS Photonics. , a company derived from the UPV. However, current manufacturing techniques for these metasurfaces mean that they are still far from being applied in the industrial environment. And this is another of the great challenges to which the Metasmart project responds.

“We want to revolutionize the field of metasurfaces by investigating new production processes based on versatile, precise and cheap additive manufacturing techniques (multilayer 2D printing of functional materials, 3D and 4D printing). Using 3D printing we will save material, we will be more respectful of the environment, the prototyping capacity will be higher, we will be able to relocate production. It will be a before and after in the development and application of these materials”, points out Sergio Lechago, a researcher at DAS Photonics. Destruction of tumors

Thanks to medical and technological advances, in recent decades, the life expectancy of patients diagnosed with cancer has been increasing. This vital increase has a toll for many cancer patients, which is usually very high in terms of their quality of life (both physically and psychologically) due to the aggressive side effects that many of these treatments have.

Noé Jiménez, a researcher at the Institute of Instrumentation for Molecular Imaging (I3M), a joint center of the UPV and the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) in Spain, explains that current thermal ablation treatments affect not only the tumor area, but also also to healthy tissues surrounding the tumor. “What we seek with these metasurfaces is to destroy it mechanically. In this modality, the ultrasound will act like a hammer, crushing cell by cell, producing a very focused lesion with very delimited edges, at the histological level, so that healthy tissues would not be damaged”, Jiménez points out.

In this sense, César David Vera Donoso, a physician from the Urology Service of the La Fe Hospital in Valencia and director of the NITIUV Research Group of the IIS La FE, who leads the final clinical application, stresses that the medicine and technology of the future must be capable not only of curing diseases, but of generating the least possible impact on the patient with increasingly less aggressive and minimally invasive therapies. “With this idea in mind, the technology proposed in Metasmart will generate concrete solutions based on the use of metasurfaces, initially for the treatment of prostate cancer. Being this the most frequent tumor in men worldwide, histotripsy as a focal treatment in patients with localized cancer aims to achieve a curative treatment that is incorporated into the possibilities we currently have, avoiding the patient the side effects of other techniques such as radiation therapy or thermoablation. This would make it possible to treat a very large number of patients with prostate cancer”, highlights Dr. Vera Donoso.

Better wireless communications

The Metasmart project also proposes the design and development of reconfigurable 3D electromagnetic metasurfaces capable of manipulating radiated wavefronts. Its application will improve and optimize wireless data communications in different frequency bands, avoiding interference and coverage drops. “In this field, these metasurfaces would help to improve the performance of communication towers, first of all, and ultimately, to optimize our communications”, highlights Ana Díaz, a researcher at the NTC of the UPV.

The NTC researcher also points out that these metasurfaces could also be integrated into tables, walls, and other elements or furnishings in homes, businesses, and other buildings, creating an intelligent environment that would minimize the chances that, for example, a call is cut off or the connection to the network drops, among other problems.

New smart materials created by 3D printing have two clear fields of application: foolproof telecommunications to ultrasound cancer treatments. (Image: UPV)

From AIMPLAS, Technological Institute of Plastics, 2D and 3D multilayer processing technologies will be investigated for the development of both acoustic and electromagnetic metasurfaces. Meanwhile, the work of the ISTEC team will focus on the analysis of applications in the field of communications, the definition of requirements and the validation of prototypes.

Among the hundred proposals submitted for the call for ‘Strategic Cooperation Projects’ of the Valencia Innovation Agency, METASMART was the one that obtained the best assessment of the entire call.

The project began in September of last year and will conclude at the end of 2024. (Source: UPV)