ReviewPolymers2026
Intelligent Circular Polymer Additive Manufacturing: From Recycling Pathways to Lifecycle Engineering.
Review in Polymers, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Polymer Additive Manufacturing (AM) offers substantial opportunities for material-efficient and distributed production, yet its transition towards genuine circularity remains constrained by cumulative material degradation, fragmented recovery strategies, and the limited integration of lifecycle, environmental, economic, and industrial considerations. This critical systematic review examines circularity in polymer AM beyond conventional end-of-life recycling by integrating material behaviour, manufacturing-induced evolution, degradation mechanisms, lifecycle performance and value retention, recovery pathways, and sustainability assessment within a unified systems perspective. Following a PRISMA-based selection process, 3214 records were progressively screened to a final corpus of 175 peer-reviewed studies published between 2015 and 2025. The evidence demonstrates that polymer circularity is not an intrinsic material property, but an emergent lifecycle outcome governed by polymer chemistry, manufacturing history, cumulative degradation, functional-value retention, waste-stream quality, recovery technology, infrastructure, and environmental and economic conditions. Based on this synthesis, the review introduces Intelligent Circular Polymer Additive Manufacturing (ICPAM), a lifecycle-wide framework integrating Design for Circularity, degradation-aware manufacturing, adaptive recovery, digital intelligence, industrial implementation, and continuous feedback. ICPAM further incorporates multi-criteria decision support for selecting context-dependent circular strategies and a qualitative/semi-quantitative maturity assessment for identifying lifecycle bottlenecks and implementation priorities. The resulting framework shifts polymer AM circularity from reactive waste management towards proactive lifecycle engineering, while recognizing that emerging regenerative materials and digital technologies still require substantial industrial validation before their full circular potential can be realized.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.