Copper is widely used in conventional industries owing to its excellent electrical and thermal conductivity. With the growing demand for complex copper components featuring higher manufacturing accuracy, lower cost, and improved material utilization, additive manufacturing (AM) has opened up new opportunities for processing copper and its alloys. This review summarizes the major production routes for copper powders and wires, including electrolytic methods, plasma rotating electrode processing, atomization, wire drawing, and wire fabrication method,and compares their advantages, limitations, and suitable application scenarios. It further highlights recent progress in AM technologies for copper alloys, such as powder bed fusion, directed energy deposition, binder jetting, cold-spray additive manufacturing, and wire-based electron beam additive manufacturing, and systematically discusses their advantages, bottlenecks, and key technical challenges in fabricating copper parts. In addition, the effects of copper’s intrinsic material characteristics—high reflectivity, high thermal conductivity, susceptibility to oxidation, and high thermal expansion coefficient on AM processes are analyzed. Finally, potential mitigation strategies are proposed, including appropriately increasing scan spacing and laser power, switching laser sources, surface modifications, and post-processing treatments.
| 科 Family | 属数 Number of genus | 种数 Number of species | 占总种数比例 Percentage of total species (%) | 属 Genus | 种数 Number of species | 占总种数比例 Percentage of total species (%) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 鹅膏菌科Amanitaceae | 2 | 11 | 5.26 | 鹅膏菌属 Amanita | 10 | 4.78 |
| 小菇科 Mycenaceae | 2 | 12 | 5.74 | 丝盖伞属 Inocybe | 5 | 2.39 |
| 多孔菌科 Polyporaceae | 8 | 14 | 6.70 | 蜡蘑属 Laccaria | 5 | 2.39 |
| 红菇科 Russulaceae | 3 | 23 | 11.00 | 小皮伞属 Marasmius | 6 | 2.87 |
| 小菇属 Mycena | 11 | 5.26 | ||||
| 光柄菇属 Pluteus | 5 | 2.39 | ||||
| 红菇属 Russula | 17 | 8.13 | ||||
| 栓菌属 Trametes | 5 | 2.39 |