Additive Manufacturing (AM) Technologies for Clean Energy Applications: A Review with a Perspective on the Role Played by Lasers
K-J. LIN, D-D. Gu, L. Du and J. Liu
The depletion of traditional fossil fuels and the serious environment problems trigger considerable efforts in the development of clean energy technologies. A novel manufacturing technology, additive manufacturing (AM), which is capable to fabricate complex geometries and provide greater design freedom, is widely used in the application of biomedical implantation, tissue engineering and aerospace sector as well as clean energy. This paper reviews the recent advancement of AM technology in clean energy devices, such as batteries, supercapacitors (SC), fuel cell, solar energy devices and wind energy devices. Firstly, various AM technologies used in the area of clean energy are briefly introduced. Then various clean energy devices, such as batteries, SC and fuel cells, fabricated by AM are reviewed. The paper also includes some suggestions for further researches in the near future.
Keywords: Laser, supercapacitor (SC), battery, fuel cell, additive manufacturing (AM), three-dimensional (3-D) printing, stereolithography (SL), clean energy, solar energy, wind energy