Additive manufacturing of high-performance engineering polymers: present and future

High-performance engineering polymers continually challenge existing boundaries of rapidly emerging research areas including electronics, transportation, energy, defense and aerospace. Significant research attention over the past decade highlights the exceptional performance of these polymers due to their superior thermomechanical properties and stability under extreme conditions. Unfortunately, inherent structure–property relationships of high-performance engineering polymers, which predict this unique complement of physical properties, also describe high-viscosity melts and high melting temperatures. These processing challenges have steered researchers towards advanced processing methods, such as additive manufacturing, that allow for unprecedented control over part geometry. In addition, additive manufacturing serves to advance application–cost relationships, as part optimization and 3D printing of previous monolithic components allow for less material consumption. Currently, the additive manufacturing materials toolbox only contains a fraction of commercially available high-performance polymers due to unique processing constraints. This review discusses recent efforts towards the successful additive manufacturing of three high-performance polymer families, i.e. polysulfones, poly(ether ether ketone)s and polyimides.