ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with feedstocks for additive manufacturing (AM) made of two families of sustainable, biocompatible, and biodegradable materials: starch and sugar and their compounds. Commercial and experimental filaments made of starch for AM (namely binder jetting and fused filament fabrication) are described, along with experimental feedstocks for AM made of starch and sugar. The applications of the above materials range from simple ones such as food (as expected), visual models and supporting materials, to more complicated and demanding ones such as components for soft robots and scaffolds for tissue engineering, and advanced lab-on-a-chip. Starch and sugar are inexpensive and have demonstrated good printability, but additional R&D is required to improve their compatibility with other ingredients such as poly(lactic acid), and reduce the porosity of the resulting blends, in order to develop mechanical properties suited for load-bearing components.
