Functional Materials for Additive Manufacturing

Dear Colleagues,

Additive manufacturing (AM) includes different technologies that are changing the approach adopted to produce advanced components in terms of geometrical complexity and material characteristics. Most industries, including aerospace, defense, oil and gas, medicine, and energy, are exploring the adoption of the available AM technologies to boost their production needs or improve the performance of their products.

One of the frontiers of AM technologies is the possibility of creating functional materials that are specifically designed and synthetized for a specific function and are characterized by a specific morphology and tailored properties. One example is provided by functionally graded materials that are constituted by two materials whose compositions vary continuously along the thickness to produce a component with different characteristics on its two sides (e.g., the tenacity of a steel alloy on one side and the heat and corrosion resistance of a nickel-based alloy on the other). Many available AM technologies are perfect candidates to create functional materials due to their flexibility to change materials during the deposition/sintering processes and the large variety of materials that could be used.

Several approaches have been developed for the design, production and testing of functional materials, but a systematic approach to depict the “big picture” of industrial application is still an open issue. To raise the industrial interest in this field it is mandatory to provide a reliable technological approach to create functional materials using AM, the capability to inspect and control the quality of such materials and the impact of their adoption both in terms of product performance and AM’s impact on production systems.

Hence, this Special Issue intends to draw attention to the newest advances in the design and production of functional materials using AM technologies.

The proposed Special Issue particularly fits the following scopes, but is open to related topics:

• Approaches to produce functional materials with different AM technologies.
• Advances in materials to achieve a high-performance functional material.
• Mechanical and metallurgical characteristics of functional materials.
• Application of functional materials and approaches to their design.
• Benefits of the introduction of functional materials in different sectors.
• Environmental impact of functional materials’ production and use.
• Testing of functional material applications.

Dr. Gianni Campatelli
Guest Editor

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