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Recent Advances in Additive Manufacturing Technology of Smart Materials
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Recent Advances in Additive Manufacturing Technology of Smart Materials

A special issue of Applied Sciences (ISSN 2076-3417). This special issue belongs to the section "Additive Manufacturing Technologies".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 20 December 2025 | Viewed by 1248

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Gennaro Salvatore Ponticelli

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Guest Editor
Department of Engineering, University of Rome Niccolò Cusano, Via Don Carlo Gnocchi 3, 00166 Rome, Italy
Interests: additive manufacturing; laser material processing; surface finishing; process optimization; characterization; advanced materials; soft computing; life cycle sustainability assessment
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Prof. Dr. Stefano Guarino

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Engineering, University of Rome Niccolò Cusano, Via Don Carlo Gnocchi 3, 00166 Rome, Italy
Interests: additive manufacturing; laser material processing; surface finishing; process optimization; characterization; advanced materials; soft computing; life cycle sustainability assessment
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The broad range of applications for additive manufacturing technologies has generated great interest in many industrial fields. In fact, as compared to traditional procedures, they provide the potential for a high level of design flexibility and the use of different raw materials with savings in terms of usage, costs, design, and production time. However, the lack of precise and well-defined criteria on process parameters and final properties can be considered the natural result of such a tremendous expansion. Moreover, the poor surface quality that may still be attained for the as-built components further limits the spreading of the additive manufacturing technologies where stringent criteria must be met for certification. This inevitably leads to a rise in significant issues, which require higher expenses and longer production times to resolve.

Scientific contributions on novel technologies, strategies, production techniques, and materials for additive manufacturing processes are the focus of this Special Issue. New material development for high-performance applications, surface treatments, and process improvement for better mechanical properties and surface finishes can all be the subject of scientific contributions. Additionally, we welcome contributions that include economic and environmental impact analysis through life cycle sustainability assessment, as well as characterization techniques and computational tools for modeling the process and material properties, e.g., numerical simulations, mathematical modeling, optimization, and control.

Dr. Gennaro Salvatore Ponticelli
Prof. Dr. Stefano Guarino
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Applied Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • additive manufacturing
  • advanced materials
  • characterization
  • design for additive manufacturing
  • finishing
  • life cycle assessment
  • numerical modeling
  • process optimization
  • surface treatment

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

14 pages, 1661 KiB  
Article
Investigating the Reliability and Dynamic Response of Fully 3D-Printed Thermistors
by Umur Cicek, Darren Southee and Andrew Johnson
Appl. Sci. 2025, 15(12), 6822; https://doi.org/10.3390/app15126822 - 17 Jun 2025
Viewed by 361
Abstract
This paper investigates the measurement capability, dynamic response, and mechanical reliability of all 3D-printed multi-material thermistors. The thermistor design consisted of three main components: a polycarbonate (PC) substrate, a silver (Ag) electrode pair, and a poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythophene):poly(4-styrenesulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS) thermosensitive layer. The thermistors were fabricated [...] Read more.
This paper investigates the measurement capability, dynamic response, and mechanical reliability of all 3D-printed multi-material thermistors. The thermistor design consisted of three main components: a polycarbonate (PC) substrate, a silver (Ag) electrode pair, and a poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythophene):poly(4-styrenesulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS) thermosensitive layer. The thermistors were fabricated using two manufacturing techniques: fused deposition modeling (FDM) for the substrate and micro-dispensing for the Ag and PEDOT:PSS films. Two designs with different sensing areas, D1 (90 mm2) and D2 (54 mm2), were fabricated. As the indicator of measurement capability, the highest thermal indexes were recorded as 905.64 and 813.03 K for D1 and D2 thermistors, respectively. Thermistors exhibited comparable dynamic performance, with normalized resistance variations ranging from 0.96 to 1 for temperature changes between 25 and 45 °C. The sensing area influenced both measurement capability and dynamic performance, where larger sensing areas enhanced measurement capability but extended the time required to complete dynamic cycles, around 400 s for D1 versus 350 s for D2. Adhesion tests revealed a strong bonding between the PEDOT:PSS and Ag layer with less than 5% material removal. However, the adhesion of the PEDOT:PSS to the PC substrate was weak, with over 65% material removal. Morphological analysis indicated that the poor adhesion was caused by suboptimal surface properties of the 3D-printed substrate, even resulting in gaps between these two surfaces. This study demonstrates that our all 3D-printed multi-material thermistors can match reported measurement performance with an acceptable dynamic performance while highlighting the need to improve 3D-printed substrate surface properties to enhance the performance of such multi-material structures. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Recent Advances in Additive Manufacturing Technology of Smart Materials)
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19 pages, 6159 KiB  
Article
Laser Sintering of Nano-Graphite-Reinforced Polyamide Composites for Next-Generation Smart Materials: A Preliminary Investigation of Processability and Electromechanical Properties
by Stefano Guarino, Emanuele Mingione, Gennaro Salvatore Ponticelli, Alfio Scuderi, Simone Venettacci and Vittorio Villani
Appl. Sci. 2025, 15(10), 5708; https://doi.org/10.3390/app15105708 - 20 May 2025
Viewed by 565
Abstract
Multifunctional reinforced polymer composites provide an ideal platform for next-generation smart materials applications, enhancing matrix properties like electrical and thermal conductivity. Reinforcements are usually based on functional metal alloys, inorganic compounds, polymers, and carbon nanomaterials. The latter have drawn significant interest in developing [...] Read more.
Multifunctional reinforced polymer composites provide an ideal platform for next-generation smart materials applications, enhancing matrix properties like electrical and thermal conductivity. Reinforcements are usually based on functional metal alloys, inorganic compounds, polymers, and carbon nanomaterials. The latter have drawn significant interest in developing high-performance smart composites due to their exceptional mechanical, electrical, and thermal properties. The increasing demand for highly complex functional structures has led additive manufacturing to become a reference technology for the production of smart material components. In this study, laser sintering technology was adopted to manufacture nano-graphite/nylon-12 composites with a carbon-based particle reinforcement content of up to 10% in weight. The results showed that the addition of the filler led to the fabrication of samples that reached an electrical conductivity of around 4·10−4 S/cm, in contrast to the insulating behavior of a bare polymeric matrix (i.e., lower than 10−10 S/cm), while maintaining a low production cost, though at the expense of mechanical performance under both tensile and bending loads. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Recent Advances in Additive Manufacturing Technology of Smart Materials)
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