Lattice and Triply Periodic Minimal Surface Architectures for Dental Implants: A Scoping Review of Design, Manufacturing, and Performance

ABSTRACT

Dental implant longevity depends on both biological integration and mechanical compatibility with bone. Dense titanium and Ti‐6Al‐4V implants are far stiffer than peri‐implant bone, a mismatch that promotes stress shielding and marginal bone loss. Architected lattice and triply periodic minimal surface (TPMS) structures, enabled by additive manufacturing (AM), lower effective stiffness and create interconnected space for bone ingrowth, vascularization, and osseointegration, yet the value of any single architecture is hard to isolate because geometry, density, material, processing, and surface state act together. This scoping review maps the evidence on lattice and TPMS dental implants and how design strategy, AM route, and material system govern mechanical reliability and biological validation. Studies were charted by material, architecture, AM route, model scale (15 full implants, three implant‐like or root‐analogue models, 10 scaffold or coupon specimens), validation level (L1–L5) and outcome. Across the 28 included studies, titanium and Ti‐6Al‐4V dominate (19 studies, 12 of them fabricated by laser powder bed fusion), while zirconia from vat‐based ceramic routes emerges as an esthetic, biologically promising alternative (six studies). The evidence remains uneven: 24 studies included simulation, 16 physical mechanical testing, 11 in vitro biology, three in vivo validation and only two a fatigue endpoint, and none reached clinical‐level evidence. A lattice implant thus behaves as the combined product of its material, architecture, process, and surface; progress depends on reporting manufactured geometry, demonstrating fatigue and debris safety, and pairing in vitro with in vivo osseointegration. On the present evidence base, architecture‐level statements are best read as design hypotheses and evidence trends rather than as clinically preferred configurations.