Epitaxy and Microstructure Evolution in Metal Additive Manufacturing

Metal additive manufacturing (AM) works on the principle of incremental layer-by-layer material consolidation, facilitating the fabrication of objects of arbitrary complexity through the controlled melting and resolidification of feedstock materials by using high-power energy sources. The focus of metal AM is to produce complex-shaped components made of metals and alloys to meet demands from various industrial sectors such as defense, aerospace, automotive, and biomedicine. Metal AM involves a complex interplay between multiple modes of energy and mass transfer, fluid flow, phase change, and microstructural evolution. Understanding the fundamental physics of these phenomena is a key requirement for metal AM process development and optimization. The effects of material characteristics and processing conditions on the resulting epitaxy and microstructure are of critical interest in metal AM. This article reviews various metal AM processes in the context of fabricating metal and alloy parts through epitaxial solidification, with material systems ranging from pure-metal and prealloyed to multicomponent materials. The aim is to cover the relationships between various AM processes and the resulting microstructures in these material systems.