Expansion potential of auxetic prosthetic skin grafts: a review

Abstract

AbstractThe expansion of conventional prosthetic skin grafts has been quantified to be very low and insufficient for treating large and severe burn injuries with small amounts of available donor skin. Auxetic metamaterials and structures are the new class of materials which shows expansion in both directions while stretching in one direction (i.e., negative Poisson’s effect). This property of auxetic materials offers unprecedented potential for expansions in prosthetic skin grafts, which is crucial for covering large burn injury sites. This review article focuses on summarizing the up-to-date literature on design and analysis of auxetic skin grafts, and their expansion potential. This knowledge is anticipated to advance burn mitigation research and allow for development of prosthetic skin grafts for severe burn skin replacements.