Digital design and additive manufacturing of structural materials in electrochemical and thermal energy storage systems: a review

ABSTRACT

Additive manufacturing is increasingly utilised in the energy conversion and storage field. It offers great flexibility to fabricate structural materials with improved physical properties, and other advantages such as material waste reduction, fabrication time minimisation, and cost-effectiveness. In this review, current developments in additive manufacturing of energy storage devices are discussed. The digital design approaches of structural materials and mainstream additive manufacturing techniques, including vat photopolymerization, powder bed fusion, material jetting, binder jetting, material extrusion, and directed energy deposition, are summarised. Then, a comprehensive review of recent advances in the electrochemical and thermal energy storage field is provided. In the end, an integrated framework considering digital design and additive manufacturing is proposed for a wide range of energy applications.

KEYWORDS:

• Additive manufacturing
• digital design
• electrochemical energy storage
• thermal energy storage
• structural materials

Acknowledgement

The authors would like to acknowledge Gen3D for providing licences used for structural material design and illustration.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability

Data will be made available on request.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities: [Grant Number FRF-TP-22-034A1].