Advances of sacrificial strategies in additive manufacturing: towards precision 3D architectures and broad material adaptability

Abstract The pursuit of 3D structures with precise microarchitectures and broad material adaptability has long been a central scientific objective, given their transformative potential to tackle critical challenges across applications such as vascular networks, optical components, soft robotics, energy storage devices, and microfluidics. While conventional additive manufacturing enables unprecedented design complexity and rapid prototyping, it remains limited by architectural instability, resolution constraints, low programmable porosity, and incompatibility with high-performance materials like carbon, glass, ceramics, and metals. By integrating 3D printing technologies with sacrificial strategies (also known as sacrificial 3D printing), these limitations have been largely overcome, where 3D-printed sacrificial templates are thermally decomposed, chemically etched, or photolytically degraded, enabling the deterministic fabrication of microarchitectures with previously unattainable adaptability and precision. Sacrificial 3D printing has made significant progress over the past decade, witnessing a growth in sacrificial materials, removal methods, and applications. This review highlights recent advancements of sacrificial strategies in additive manufacturing, with a further focus on key printing technologies (e.g., vat photopolymerization and material extrusion), sacrificial materials, permanent materials, and extensive applications in tissue engineering, optics, mechanics, electronics, and thermodynamics. Finally, this review critically evaluates the current challenges and future perspectives in materials development, printing technologies, post-processing, structural design and simulation, functions and applications, aiming to inspire further research and innovation to unlock the full potential of sacrificial 3D printing.