Breaking the Mold in Materials Development

Recent innovations in materials development—a shift toward design for additive, quicker prototypes, less material waste, and incorporation of AI and advanced simulation, as examples—have led to overall enhanced performance and predictability in production environments, along with a promising financial outlook for the future design of materials.

Read on for a brief market rundown and a few expert takes on how materials innovations are taking shape in 2026 and beyond.

At last year’s Additive Manufacturing Strategies event in New York City, Scott Dunham, executive vice president of research at Additive Manufacturing Research, highlighted the AM materials market, armed with promising data. Materials, in contrast to AM hardware and services, have achieved constant growth in recent years, according to Dunham. In 2023, for example, sales of materials edged past hardware sales. In 2024, the worldwide materials market topped $3.5 billion, and metal powders realized a 22% CAGR (compared to polymers at 11%). 

In addition to the profitability factor, a recent report from IDTechEx, “Metal Additive Manufacturing 2025-2035: Technologies, Players, and Market Outlook” dives into benchmarking innovative metal 3D printing technology, including powder bed fusion, binder jetting, and directed energy deposition, with forecasts for AM hardware and materials.

Since metal additive manufacturing (metal 3D printing) first was commercialized in the 1990s, some historical events have shaped its progress (such as COVID-19, overhyped metal 3D printing startups, upsurge in the Chinese AM market, and more). Despite the events facing the industry, the materials segment keeps adapting to meet industry demand, according to IDTechEx.

The IDTechEx report also indicates that most future annual revenues in this space will be linked to material demand over actual printer sales. Companies are unveiling more AM-specific material portfolios, including structural alloys, high-entropy alloys and amorphous alloys. The report names titanium powder as the material with most promising significance moving forward. 

Experts also weighed in on how new materials are being created to maximize use of AM technology. For instance, Jason Sebastian of IL-based QuesTek Innovations, says there’s a shift in the approach to materials development toward design for additive:

“Today, new materials for additive manufacturing are increasingly being designed specifically for the additive process, rather than adapted from legacy alloys originally developed for casting, forging, or machining. Engineers recognize that many traditional materials behave unpredictably when exposed to the rapid melting, solidification, and thermal cycling inherent in AM.” 

He continues: “As a result, materials development is shifting toward design-for-AM approaches that consider printability, microstructure evolution, and in-service performance simultaneously. This includes tailoring alloy chemistry to control cracking, porosity, and phase stability during printing, as well as designing materials to take advantage of AM’s ability to create complex geometries and consolidate parts.”

QuesTek Innovations provided an example for aerospace and space applications, where the company’s team demonstrated how alloys can be “purpose-built for AM by balancing properties like strength, oxidation resistance, and burn resistance, enabling printable materials suitable for extreme propulsion environments rather than forcing legacy alloys into additive workflows.”

Dr. Olga (Dr. O) Ivanova, director of technology of Arizona-based Mechnano, a company focused on AM-oriented nanotechnology, emphasizes how AM materials development is moving away from adapting metals and toward designing materials specifically for the AM process environment. “This includes engineering materials at the micro and nano scale to improve interlayer adhesion, electrical performance, mechanical consistency, and print reliability,” she explains.

Ivanova continues, “Increasingly, material innovation is happening at the interface between formulation science and process physics. Developers are focusing on how materials behave during deposition, fusion, and cooling rather than just their final bulk properties.”

The goal, according to Ivanova, is not only better performance, but also improved predictability and scalability in real-world production environments. 

As materials development evolves, this opens the door for adoption of forward-thinking technologies across industries such as aerospace, automotive, electronics, healthcare, construction, and energy, according to a report from Maximize Market Research (MMR), “Advanced Materials Market Growth Outlook Signals a 4.6% CAGR Amid Technological Advancements.”

The MMR report notes how advanced materials increasingly are replacing traditional materials in high-value applications thanks to ongoing innovation in material science, complemented by increased investments in R&D and manufacturing technology development. The shift from traditional to advanced materials is expected to continue, backed by revenue growth—in 2024, the market size stood at $100.37 billion, with forecasted growth projected to $143.84 billion by 2032.

Pain Points and Possibilities

But use of advanced materials is not without pain points, according to MMR, including high production and processing costs, because the materials often require specialized equipment. There are also technical and scalability issues, and supply chain limitations, especially if there is dependence on rare or specialized raw materials, along with regulatory barriers.

Despite obstacles, the AM materials present countless opportunities, according to the report, including expanded use for electric vehicles and mobility for EV batteries, lightweight vehicle structures, and thermal management systems. Such advanced materials allow for design flexibility, quicker prototypes and less material waste. 

And advanced materials open the gate to expanded use of AI and advanced simulation in their development. 

The ICMD® materials design and engineering software platform now features simulation-driven capabilities. Image courtesy: QuesTek Innovations

Sebastian of QuesTek Innovations, expounds, “Advanced simulation is now a central driver of accelerated materials design, with AI increasingly utilized to enhance simulation frameworks. Physics-based modeling allows engineers to predict how materials will behave during additive manufacturing and in service before committing to costly physical trials, reducing uncertainty early in the development process.

He continues, “These simulation tools enable teams to explore a much broader design space by virtually evaluating how changes in composition, processing parameters, or geometry affect microstructure and performance. The result is less reliance on trial-and-error experimentation, shorter development cycles, and lower qualification risk.”

In fact, QuesTek Innovations’ ICMD® software platform was made specifically as a simulation-led solution that integrates physics-based models “to help engineers predict microstructure and performance in additively manufactured alloys early in development.”

At Mechnano, Ivanova notes that simulation and AI are definitively playing a part in future materials development, but she notes it is with notable nuance: “Simulation and AI are becoming valuable tools for narrowing design space, predicting structure–property relationships, and accelerating iteration cycles. They are particularly useful in screening formulations, modeling thermal and mechanical behavior during printing, and identifying promising material architectures more quickly than traditional trial-and-error methods.

“That said,” she gives pause, “additive manufacturing materials still require deep experimental validation. AI and simulation are most effective when paired with strong materials intuition and real process data. The acceleration comes from better decision-making earlier in development, not from eliminating physical testing altogether.”

The global advanced materials market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 4.6% from 2025-2032. Image courtesy: Maximize Market Research.

Trends in Metal Additive in 2026 

Joris Peels, vice president, Consulting, Additive Manufacturing Research, shares his perspective on materials. "At the moment, we´re seeing a continued rise in aluminium for producing larger-scale parts and higher volumes. Materials such as CP1 continue to show strong economics with thicker layers, resulting in faster print times and lower part costs. Nickel superalloy demand is strong in energy and industry, while copper is doing well in electronics, heat management generally and space propulsion. Newer players in the space are offering lower-cost materials across the board in order to win market share."

Peels further elaborates on how increased adoption in maritime defense applications is impacting greater use of certain types of materials, such as Nickel Aluminium Bronze (NAB) & copper nickel (CuNi). Likewise, it's a similar story in aerospace and defense applications, where this is driving the need for refractories, such as niobium & tantalum, and their alloys, according to Peels.

"We´re seeing the emergence of 'designed for additive' materials engineered specifically to excel in critical, often strategic applications," Peels says. "Materials such as GR-Cop42, DuAlumin3D, Tanbium and GRX-810 can be created much more quickly than in the past, through 3D printing and for 3D printing. Rarely discussed, rapid Additive Manufacturing alloy development is one of the more fundamental technology shifts of our time."

More Developments to Watch

Down the road, Sebastian of QuesTek Innovations, says to expect the following:

• Greater availability of AM-native materials, designed from the ground up for additive processes rather than adapted from legacy alloys
• Broader adoption of simulation-led materials design, digital workflows, and AI-assisted tools
• Faster qualification pathways, as digital validation and predictive modeling reduce uncertainty and reliance on extended physical testing
• Increased focus on supply-chain resilience, with materials designed around constrained elements or localized production needs.

Ivanova of Mechnano adds: “By 2026, we expect to see materials that enable additive manufacturing to move more decisively from prototyping into functional, end-use production. This includes greater availability of application-specific materials with embedded functionality, such as electrostatic discharge (ESD) control, improved thermal or electrical performance, and enhanced durability under real operating conditions.”

Global Insights

Peels weighs in on China's role in additive manufacturing. "Additive manufacturing materials development is at the forefront of new Chinese national planning and work by U.S. national labs.  In Refractory Complex Concentrated Alloy (RCCA) development, for example, we see the potential for one nation or firm to dominate materials families that will, in tandem with the deployment of Additive Manufacturing, dictate the outcome of the great power competition between the US and China. Working hypersonic vehicles, jet & rocket propulsion, satellites, as well as nuclear energy futures will be determined through the production, through Additive, of optimal higher performance components in new alloys."