Recent advancements in additive manufacturing technologies for porous material applications

The fabrication of porous structures by additive manufacturing (AM) technologies has been broadly explored over the past few years. Based on the application, most of the research work in AM is focused on making high-density parts with porosity values ranging from 0.1 to 5%. Because of numerous technical challenges and lack of process control/monitoring, full aids of AM in porous application industries are not yet widespread in comparison with other technologies in the same arena. However, only very limited information is available on the exact correlation between process control and final 3D object, but this is rare. In 3D technology, the exact process parameters that user needs to adapt while processing his 3D object information are very limited. In this article, we have reviewed and critically analyzed present established AM technologies for fabricating porous parts, as well as post-processing characterization techniques and its applications in detail. In-depth analysis is done on different lattice structures and process parameters those are controlling the porosity of AM parts. We have also attempted to briefly discuss on the present porous applications in filtration and purification, energy, medical, and pharmaceutical domains.