Significance With the rapid development of additive manufacturing, the preparation of metal matrix composites using additive manufacturing has gradually become a current research hotspot. Due to the increasing demand for high-performance, lightweight, and complex structural components in aerospace products, traditional preparation processes are unable to meet these product requirements. Additive manufacturing can form metal components with complex shapes/structures while meeting practical application requirements such as simple production equipment, high molding efficiency, and low production costs. Therefore, additive manufacturing is widely used in the forming of key aerospace components such as engine parts, structural components, fuel nozzles, and turbine blades. The use of additive manufacturing to form metal matrix composites is a revolutionary change for its industrial production. Moreover, additive manufacturing of metal matrix composites is based on the process characteristics of rapid solidification, which refines the microstructure of the workpiece and greatly improves the strength without losing plasticity.

Progress  This paper reviews additive manufacturing (AM) processes for metal matrix composites (MMCs), analyzing their recent advancements and comparative advantages. Among laser-based approaches, Selective Laser Melting (SLM) enables fabrication of ceramic particle/whisker-reinforced MMCs with defect-free metallurgical bonding and complex geometries; however, its reliance on expensive powders and time-consuming powder-spreading steps limits mass production scalability. Laser Direct Energy Deposition (L-DED) and Wire-fed Laser AM offer higher deposition efficiency and material utilization, making them suitable for rapid prototyping of large components, yet interlayer remelting during deposition causes gradient microstructures and mechanical property variations, necessitating extended process optimization. Arc/Electron Beam AM (e.g., Wire Arc AM, Electron Beam Melting) excels in fabricating dissimilar metal composites and graded structures with high efficiency and low cost, though their surface quality lags behind laser-based methods. For continuous fiber-reinforced MMCs, specialized processes must be developed to integrate automated fiber transport/impregnation with existing AM techniques to achieve robust fiber-matrix bonding. Meanwhile, binder jetting—though lacking high-energy heat sources—is uniquely suited for reinforcing phases vulnerable to thermal damage (e.g., in resin/ceramic matrix composites), though its application in metal MMCs remains constrained by thermal limitations.

Conclusions and Prospects  Future research on additive manufacturing of metal matrix composites should focus on the following aspects. The primary one is to promote the combination of software simulation and process optimization to predict the microevolution of the distribution pattern, composition content, interface bonding, and by-product generation in composites. Thus, the mechanism of using additive manufacturing to introduce reinforcements into the matrix can be determined to efficiently coordinate the relationship between process parameters and mechanical performance. The second is to conduct more research in the pre-processing of raw materials and post-processing of workpieces. For example, regulating the microstructure of the reinforcing particles to improve their wetting and flowability in metal powders can be helpful to reduce the distribution of residual stresses in composite. Developing combined processes that firstly use additive manufacturing to form a green body and then prepare the metal matrix on the green body is also a solution. The third is to develop special additive manufacturing techniques for continuous fiber-reinforced metal matrix composites. Compared with other types of composites, continuous fiber-reinforced composites exhibit excellent mechanical properties.