Challenges and Opportunities for Integrating Dealloying Methods into Additive Manufacturing

The physical architecture of materials plays an integral role in determining material properties and functionality. While many processing techniques now exist for fabricating parts of any shape or size, a couple of techniques have emerged as facile and effective methods for creating unique structures: dealloying and additive manufacturing. This review discusses progress and challenges in the integration of dealloying techniques with the additive manufacturing (AM) platform to take advantage of the material processing capabilities established by each field. These methods are uniquely complementary: not only can we use AM to make nanoporous metals of complex, customized shapes—for instance, with applications in biomedical implants and microfluidics—but dealloying can occur simultaneously during AM to produce unique composite materials with nanoscale features of two interpenetrating phases. We discuss the experimental challenges of implementing these processing methods and how future efforts could be directed to address these difficulties. Our premise is that combining these synergistic techniques offers both new avenues for creating 3D functional materials and new functional materials that cannot be synthesized any other way. Dealloying and AM will continue to grow both independently and together as the materials community realizes the potential of this compelling combination.