The intellectual core of the review is the idea that electrochemistry offers a unified theoretical framework for manufacturing metallic systems. Unlike purely thermal or mechanical processes, electrochemical techniques manipulate matter at the level of ions and electrons, allowing engineers to control deposition, dissolution, and transformation with atomic-scale precision. Faraday’s laws established the quantitative relationship between electric charge and chemical change in the nineteenth century, but the past hundred years have seen that foundation expand into sophisticated models of electrode kinetics, mass transport, double-layer phenomena, and interfacial thermodynamics. The authors emphasize that this theoretical unification is what enabled the field to branch so successfully into electroplating, electrowinning, electroforming, electrochemical machining, and, more recently, additive electrochemical manufacturing.

Electroplating remains the most familiar face of the technology. What began as a decorative process for applying thin layers of silver, nickel, and chromium has evolved into a precision engineering discipline essential to corrosion protection, wear resistance, and electronic interconnection. Modern plating baths are formulated with additives that control grain size, crystallographic orientation, and internal stress, producing coatings whose properties can be tuned almost at will. The review highlights how the semiconductor industry’s dependence on electroplated copper interconnects, a breakthrough that sustained the continuation of Moore’s law in the early 2000s, exemplifies the way electrochemical manufacturing quietly underpins technologies that appear, on the surface, to have nothing to do with batteries or beakers.

Beyond coatings, the retrospective surveys electroforming and electrochemical machining as methods for producing complex metallic components that would be difficult or impossible to fabricate by casting or cutting. Electroforming builds parts atom by atom by depositing metal onto a mandrel, enabling the production of lightweight optical reflectors, precision meshes, and microstructured components with tolerances measured in micrometers. Electrochemical machining, by contrast, removes metal through controlled anodic dissolution, shaping superalloy turbine blades and medical implants without introducing the thermal stresses and microcracks associated with conventional machining. Because the tool never touches the workpiece, and because hardness is irrelevant to the process, electrochemical machining remains indispensable for the nickel-based superalloys and titanium alloys that define aerospace propulsion.

Perhaps the most consequential section of the review addresses primary metal extraction. Electrowinning and electrorefining have long been the backbone of copper, zinc, and aluminum production, and the authors trace how improvements in cell design, electrode materials, and electrolyte chemistry have steadily reduced energy consumption while improving product purity. The aluminum industry’s shift to inert anodes, still under intensive development, promises to eliminate the carbon dioxide emissions that currently accompany conventional Hall-Héroult smelting. Meanwhile, emerging electrochemical routes for iron and steel, including molten oxide electrolysis and hydrogen-assisted electroreduction, aim to replace the blast furnace, a technology responsible for roughly seven percent of global carbon dioxide emissions. The review frames these developments as the next great chapter in a hundred-year story of electrochemical scaling.

Recycling and urban mining form another frontier where electrochemistry is proving decisive. As the world accumulates end-of-life batteries, electronic waste, and mixed metal scrap, selective electrochemical recovery offers a low-temperature, low-emission alternative to pyrometallurgical smelting. Electrochemical methods can separate metals with high specificity by tuning electrode potentials, allowing cobalt, nickel, lithium, and copper to be reclaimed from complex feedstocks. The review notes that direct electrochemical relithiation of cathode materials, in which spent battery particles are rejuvenated in a molten salt or aqueous electrolyte, could dramatically shorten recycling loops and reduce the environmental burden of the clean energy transition itself. In this sense, electrochemical manufacturing is not only producing the metals of the future but also recovering them.

The retrospective also confronts persistent challenges that have limited electrochemical manufacturing’s reach. Energy efficiency remains a central concern, since many electrodeposition and extraction processes operate far from their thermodynamic minima due to overpotentials, ohmic losses, and side reactions such as hydrogen evolution. Scale-up is another hurdle: laboratory demonstrations of novel electrochemical synthesis often struggle to maintain uniform current distribution and product quality in industrial cells spanning many cubic meters. The authors call for deeper integration of electrochemical engineering with process modeling, machine learning, and in situ characterization, arguing that the field’s next century will depend on closing the gap between interfacial science and plant-scale practice. Standardization of electrolyte management, electrode durability, and life-cycle assessment will be equally critical.

Looking forward, the review identifies additive electrochemical manufacturing as a potentially disruptive convergence of old and new. Techniques that pattern metal deposition with light, scanning probes, or fluidic masks can now print complex three-dimensional structures at room temperature, bypassing the extreme heat and residual stress of laser-based metal printing. Combined with advances in flow cells, ionic liquids, and deep eutectic solvents that widen the window of depositable alloys, these methods point toward digital, electrified factories in which metal parts are grown rather than cast. The authors argue that such approaches align naturally with renewable electricity, since electrochemical processes can flexibly absorb intermittent power in a way that blast furnaces and foundries cannot.

The hundred-year retrospect ultimately delivers a message of continuity and urgency. The unified theories developed across the twentieth century have proven remarkably durable, providing the quantitative scaffolding on which every modern electrochemical manufacturing process rests. Yet the demands of the twenty-first century, decarbonized extraction, circular material flows, and atomically precise fabrication, will test that framework in unprecedented ways. What the review makes clear is that the tools for meeting those demands already exist in embryonic form, scattered across electroplating shops, smelters, battery recyclers, and semiconductor fabs. Consolidating them into a coherent manufacturing paradigm, the authors conclude, is the defining task of electrochemical engineering’s next hundred years.

Subject of Research: A critical retrospective of electrochemistry-enabled manufacturing advancements for metallic systems over the past 100 years

Article Title: Electrochemistry-enabled manufacturing advancements for metallic systems: a critical retrospect from unified theories to diverse applications over 100 years

Article References: Pan, S., Sundaram, M., Bruschi, S., Zheng, Y., Bertolini, R., Stevens, J., Zhao, B., Islam, T., & Ma, S. (2026). Electrochemistry-enabled manufacturing advancements for metallic systems: a critical retrospect from unified theories to diverse applications over 100 years. npj Advanced Manufacturing. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44334-026-00116-6

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1038/s44334-026-00116-6

Keywords: electrochemistry, manufacturing, metallic systems, electroplating, electrowinning, electrochemical machining, metal recycling, decarbonization, additive manufacturing, electrodeposition, Electrochemistry-enabled, advancements