Emerging electrochemical additive manufacturing technology for advanced materials: Structures and applications

Electrochemical additive manufacturing (ECAM) has emerged as a promising cluster of technologies with the potential to fabricate complex 3D micro/nanostructures within a diverse range of materials, serving a broad spectrum of applications. However, significant obstacles must be overcome in order to realize its full potential and produce durable materials capable of competing with present cutting-edge offers. For this, the current review provides an extensive overview of the state-of-the-art ECAM technologies including localized electrochemical deposition (LED), meniscus-confined electrodeposition (MCED), electrohydrodynamic redox printing (EHD-RP), fluid FM electrodeposition, and scanning ion conductance microscopy (SICM) and emphasizes esoteric developments in these technologies. Here, we deeply explore recent advances in printability of diverse material, structure–property correlations, dimensionality control, theoretical investigations, and modeling initiatives followed by the outline of difficulties and trends influencing the emerging research. This review, directs its focus toward the emerging scenarios of ECAM technologies, shedding light on their unique operational mechanisms and their potential utilization across numerous engineering domains, including micro-electronics (chips and circuits), energy storage (batteries and supercapacitors) sensing (electrochemical and SERS sensor), decorative art (warli art, spiritual, and abstract designs), electromagnetic shielding, catalysis and separation, to bridge the existing gaps between material properties and applications precisely. Inconclusive remarks, we discussed our perspective with unique ideas that can be used to collectively focus on this field to achieve freeform production of various materials for commercialization.