REVIEW article
Front. Chem. Eng.
Sec. Sustainable Process Engineering
This article is part of the Research TopicTransforming Waste to Energy: Innovations in Sustainable EngineeringView all articles
Additive Manufacturing of Polymers and Composites for Sustainable Engineering Applications
Provisionally accepted
Pradeep Raja C1
Vigneshwaran Shanmugam2
B K Parrthipan3S Babu1
N B Karthik Babu4*
Rhoda Afriyie Mensah5*- 1Indian Maritime University - Kolkata Campus, Kolkata, India
- 2Saveetha School of Engineering Department of Mechanical Engineering, Chennai, India
- 3Kamaraj College of Engineering and Technology, Virudhunagar, India
- 4Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Petroleum Technology, Jais, India
- 5Luleå University of Technology, Luleå, Sweden
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Additive manufacturing has rapidly emerged as a transformative and inherently sustainable technology in engineering. It enables the fabrication of components with minimal or near-zero material wastage. While additive manufacturing was initially focused on metals, it now includes polymers, ceramics, composites, and biomaterials, providing an efficient platform to produce sustainable materials. This review provides a comprehensive overview of additive manufacturing techniques for non-metal materials and emphasises their potential to minimise waste, promote resource circularity, and support sustainable production. Particular attention is given to polymer-based techniques such as fused deposition modelling, stereolithography, and selective laser sintering. These techniques offer design flexibility, reduced material wastage, and compatibility 2 with recycled and bio-based feedstocks. This review highlights the major advantages and practical applications of polymer-based materials in biomedical engineering, microelectronics, flame-retardant and conductive systems, and multifunctional composites. While most limitations are presently observed in flame-retardant systems, a comparative discussion is also provided for the other application domains to maintain balance across the sections. Additionally, emerging research on sustainable and bio-derived polymers such as PLA and PHB reinforced with carbonised biomass or eco-friendly conductive fillers is introduced to emphasise environmentally responsible pathways for developing next-generation conductive materials. Overall, this review highlights additive manufacturing as a sustainable pathway for material valorisation and innovation within waste-to-material and waste-to-energy frameworks.
Keywords: 3D printing, biomedical, Fire Retardant, Conductive polymers, Microelectronics applications, Waste minimisation
Received: 11 Oct 2025; Accepted: 03 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 C, Shanmugam, Parrthipan, Babu, Karthik Babu and Mensah. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
N B Karthik Babu, kbabu@rgipt.ac.in
Rhoda Afriyie Mensah, rhoda.afriyie.mensah@ltu.se
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.