Polymers MDPI Special Issue: “3D Printing and Customized Additive Manufacturing of Advanced Sustainable Polymers and Composites”

---

Dear Colleagues,

Additive manufacturing (AM) or 3D-printing allows for new freedom in the thermomechanical design of engineering components, and the realization of complex non-symmetric shapes that are otherwise impossible to achieve with the traditional manufacturing processes. Advanced polymers and composites have gained popularity in both research and industry and find a wide range of applications, from the aerospace sector to the biomedical sector, as well as the automotive, oil and gas, and energy sectors. The concept of advanced polymers and composites can be declined in different ways:

• Polymers and composites showing high mechanical performance;
• Multifunctional polymer matrix composites able to show “smart” properties (i.e., featured with the ability to autonomously show one or more functions other than the structural one, such as thermal conductivity, electrical conductivity, damping effect, magnetic properties, biocompatibility, and biodegradability);
• Sustainable material derived from natural biobased sources;
• Shape memory polymers allowing for 4D-printing.

The possibility of 3D-printing advanced polymers and composites opens up new perspectives from a design point of view, but some critical issues can arise depending on the printing processing, as it can affect the microstructure (i.e., anisotropy, degree of crystallinity, filler orientation, etc.) and, hence, the final properties of the object. The aim of this Special Issue is to explore the latest achievements in the 3D-printing of advanced polymers, biopolymers, and composites, focusing on the development and/or modification of the polymers suitable for 3D-printing in all the aforementioned applications, but also to study the influence of the AM processes on the resulting physical, thermal, and mechanical properties of the 3D-printed products.

Dr. Mario Bragaglia
Dr. Francesca Nanni
Guest Editors

A special issue of Polymers (ISSN 2073-4360). This special issue belongs to the section “Polymer Processing and Engineering“.
More info on: Polymers special issue webpage.
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 January 2023