Shape from Release: Inverse Design and Fabrication of Controlled Release Structures

What is it about?

Objects with different shapes can dissolve in significantly different ways inside a solution. Predicting different shapes’ dissolution dynamics is an important problem especially in pharmaceutics. More important and challenging, however, is controlling the dissolution via shape, i.e., designing shapes that lead to a desired release behavior of materials in a solvent over a specific time. Our work tackles this challenge by introducing a computational inverse design pipeline. We formulate our inverse design as a PDE-constrained topology optimization. Furthermore, we incorporate fabricability terms in the optimization objective that enable physically realizing our designs. We thoroughly analyze our approach on a diverse set of examples via both simulation and fabrication.

Featured Image

Photo by Etactics Inc on Unsplash

Photo by Etactics Inc on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Computational design of controlled-release structures can be exploited in pharmaceutics during the synthesis of drugs, food, and cosmetics. The surge of 3D printing with its unique capabilities for fabricating complex shapes opens new doors for devising novel controlled release designs.