This thesis examines the potential for using new manufacturing techniques to process functional materials.

Within this remit several combinations of processes and materials have been investigated to establish firstly, so called smart functionality. That is functional materials which are responsive to their environment and secondly suitability to specific engineering applications. These include;​ shape memory springs/cantilevers, piezoelectric pads/films and mass spectrometer components. The manufacturing techniques employed within this work are usually exploited within the areas of so called rapid prototyping or rapid manufacture. Due to the complex geometries, nested features and high tolerance of parts which can be manufactured with these techniques manufacturing novel Structures in this way has become of great interest.

This thesis demonstrates that layer based manufacturing techniques can be employed to produce parts made of smart materials which exhibit a controllable functionality.

Selective Laser Melting (SLM) has been used to produce high aspect ratio NiTi components which exhibit the shape memory effect. Details of the design of functional parts produced in this way are presented.

A second area considers the use of selective laser melting of the piezoelectric material BaTiO₃ in different forms/composites. The use of laser manufacturing techniques to produce consolidated parts is discussed and the effect of processing on the microstructure is described.

Lastly Digital Light Projection (DLP) has been used to produce precision polymeric components for mass spectroscopy applications. The incorporation of metallised parts produced in this way is also examined. The resulting quadrupole mass spectrometer is shown to compete favourably with those produced by conventional means.