Recent progress in functionalized plastic 3D printing in creation of metallized architectures

[Display omitted] •Creating defined patterns is the key to building functional devices especially for its electronic application.•Metallization of polymeric materials is widely focused to modify polymeric material with additional properties such as electrical and thermal conductivity, and optical properties.•Metallization or metal patterning on 2D materials impose some limitations such as achieving complex 3D patterns.•Improved 3D printing strategies and metallization processes should be focused to achieve selective metallization of functional polymer-based parts with complex 3D structures for smart devices.•This review article reviews these techniques alone with their characteristics to achieve certain metallization goals. Metallized surfaces, structures are of demand by many industries, however, with the demand for materials with improved properties, cost effectiveness polymers have gained exponential attention. Thus, researchers have focused on metallization of polymers to overcome the drawbacks of polymers. Over the past few decades, the research focus has evolved from metal patterning on 2D polymer substrates to additive manufacturing-based metal patterning and metallization of 3D complex structures to build smarter devices. With the growing needs, metal patterning on non-3D printed polymeric substrates have imposed some limitations to the imagination. 3D polymer structures come to light in this scenario with selective or non-selective metallization of these structures to create complex metallized structures. This work is a review of such recent studies where metallization of polymeric structures has been reported for both non-3D printed and 3D printed structures within last six years. The paper discusses the materials of interest for the 3D printing, metallization techniques, metal patterning on non-3D printed polymeric substrates and highlighting their applications and limitations when it comes to realization of 3D structures and moving on to the selective or non-selective metallization of 3D printed complex structures highlighting the mechanical, optical, and surface property enhancement and their extensive applications.