Implant infection is a serious complication resulting in pain, mortality, prolonged recovery, and antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Reducing the risk-of-infection associated with tissue implants require imminent attention, where pure silver (Ag) offers enormous potential. However, the printability, mechanical performance nor microbial resistance of additively manufactured (AM) pure Ag is unavailable in literature. This is critical as Ag is thought to play a vital role in the development of AM patient-specific infection resistant implants in the decade to come. The study therefore additively manufactured 99.9% pure-Ag through selective laser melting (SLM) and systematically investigates its mechanical performance. The validated SLM process parameters were then used to conceive two fully porous bone scaffold each at approximately 68 and 90% (wt.) porosity. While the study brings to attention the potential defects in SLM pure-Ag through X-ray nanotomography (X-ray nCT), the mechanical properties of porous Ag scaffolds were found to be similar to cancellous bone. The study achieved the highest SLM pure-Ag density of 97% with Young’s modulus (E), elastic limit (${\sigma }_e$), yield strength (${\sigma }_y$), ultimate strength (${\sigma }_{ult}$) and ultimate strain (${\epsilon }_{ult}$) in the range of 15.5–17.8 GPa, 50.7–57.7 MPa, 57.6–67.2 MPa, 82.4–95.9 MPa and 0.07–0.10 respectively. The antimicrobial efficacy of printed silver was tested against the common implant infection-causing Staphylococcus aureus and led to 90% and 99.9% kill in 4 and 14 h respectively. The study, therefore, is a first step towards achieving a new generation Ag-based AM infection resistant porous implants.

植入物感染是一种严重的并发症，导致疼痛，死亡，恢复时间延长和抗菌素耐药性（AMR）。减少与组织植入物相关的感染风险需要立即引起关注，因为纯银（Ag）具有巨大的潜力。然而，在文献中没有获得添加制造的（AM）纯银的可印刷性，机械性能或抗微生物性。这一点至关重要，因为人们认为Ag在未来十年内将在AM患者特异性抗感染植入物的开发中发挥至关重要的作用。因此，这项研究通过选择性激光熔化（SLM）增添了99.9％的纯银，并系统地研究了其机械性能。然后，将经过验证的SLM工艺参数用于构思两个全多孔骨支架，每个支架的比例分别约为68％和90％（重量 ）孔隙率。尽管这项研究通过X射线纳米断层扫描（X射线nCT）引起了SLM纯Ag的潜在缺陷，但发现多孔Ag支架的力学性能与松质骨相似。这项研究在杨氏模量（E），弹性极限（${\sigma }_{Ë}$），屈服强度（${\sigma }_{ÿ}$）， 极限强度 （${\sigma }_{ü升Ť}$）和极限应变（${\epsilon }_{ü升Ť}$）分别在15.5至17.8 GPa，50.7至57.7 MPa，57.6至67.2 MPa，82.4至95.9 MPa和0.07至0.10的范围内。测试了印刷银的抗菌功效，以对抗常见的植入物引起的金黄色葡萄球菌感染，分别在4小时和14小时内杀死90％和99.9％。因此，这项研究是实现新一代基于Ag的抗AM感染多孔植入物的第一步。