Cold Spray Additive Manufacturing Patents: Leaders & Trends 2026
- Filing has cooled sharply since its 2018 peak of 35 records. the midpoint year 2022 logged just 5, and the trend has not recovered — this is a field where the founding claims are largely settled, not one still accelerating.
- Coating and powder-metallurgy IPC codes dominate the corpus. C23C appears in 165 of 170 families and B22F in 57, showing the claim activity sits overwhelmingly in deposition and feedstock, not in downstream part design.
- The most-cited patents are two decades old and still uncited by comparable weight since. US6491208B2 and related repair-process patents carry citation counts well above 100 with nothing recent approaching that influence, a sign the foundational claim territory was staked out early.
What the cold spray additive manufacturing patent corpus actually covers
Cold spray additive manufacturing builds or repairs metal parts by firing solid feedstock particles at high velocity so they bond on impact, without melting the material. That distinction — no melt pool — is what separates it from laser or arc-based additive routes and is also why the patent claims cluster so heavily around powder feedstock composition, nozzle geometry and deposition parameters rather than part geometry or slicing software. The dataset here spans 170 patent families filed between 2015 and mid-2026, searched against IPC classes covering surface coating (C23C), powder metallurgy (B22F) and spray/atomising equipment (B05B).
Filing offices skew toward the United States and Europe, with a meaningful share of PCT applications, consistent with a technology whose commercial buyers are aerospace and turbine repair shops operating across those jurisdictions. Publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so the last one to two years in any trend chart will look thinner than the underlying filing activity actually was.
Where the filings sit, and where the activity has gone quiet
Two views of the same 170-family dataset: the year-by-year filing count, and how those families distribute across IPC subclasses.
A 2018 peak that has not been repeated
Filings ran at 11 in 2017, rose to a peak of 35 in 2018, and had fallen back to single digits by the 2022 midpoint of 5. The 2026 count of 2 is a partial year and will revise upward as later publications land, but even generously adjusted it does not point to a new filing wave — this looks like a technology whose core claim space was staked early and is now maintained rather than expanded.
Deposition and feedstock dominate the classification mix
C23C (coating and surface deposition) touches 165 of the 170 families, essentially universal coverage, with B22F (powder metallurgy, 57) and B05B (spraying and atomising, 54) close behind. B33Y, the dedicated additive-manufacturing classification, appears in only 22 families — a reminder that most of this corpus was filed and classified as coating or spray technology before cold spray was widely framed as an AM process in its own right.
Shares are the percentage of the 170 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Cold Spray Additive Advanced Materials with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about cold spray additive advanced materials and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe patents setting the citation baseline
Method for cold spray additive manufacturing (US12233456B1)
Filed by an individual inventor and granted in February 2025, this patent describes a cold spray deposition method that analyses characteristics of a single deposited line — including forming a model of the deposited material — to select a proposed deposition path before building up a full part. It ties nozzle impact angle and line-scale characterisation directly to path planning for additive builds.Notable for tying single-line characterisation data to path-planning decisions, rather than treating deposition parameters as fixed inputs.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US6491208B2 | Cold spray repair process | 135 |
| 2 | US20020102360A1 | Thermal barrier coating applied with cold spray technique | 131 |
| 3 | US20020066770A1 | Cold spray repair process | 128 |
| 4 | US6759085B2 | Method and apparatus for low pressure cold spraying | 108 |
| 5 | US6444259B1 | Thermal barrier coating applied with cold spray technique | 108 |
| 6 | US20030232132A1 | Method and apparatus for low pressure cold spraying | 67 |
| 7 | JP2006052449A | Cold spray coating film formation method | 52 |
| 8 | US7854958B2 | Method and apparatus for spray processing of porous medical devices | 42 |
| 9 | WO2015157816A1 | Process for producing a preform using cold spray | 32 |
| 10 | US8591986B1 | Cold spray deposition method | 30 |
Citation counts are a signal of influence within this searched corpus, not of current commercial importance — older repair-process and thermal-barrier patents accumulate citations simply by having existed longer.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Four figures worth pulling out of the raw dataset before deciding where to file or who to watch.
The wave has passed, not started
From a 2018 peak of 35 filed families, volume dropped to a midpoint of 5 in 2022 and sits at 2 in the still-incomplete 2026 count. Even allowing for publication lag, this is a mature filing curve rather than an emerging one.
Coating claims are almost universal
Near-total overlap with the coating and surface deposition subclass means most claim language in this corpus was drafted around surface deposition, not around additive part-building — B33Y appears in only 22 families.
US-anchored, with a real European presence
The United States receives roughly 1.75x the filings of the European Patent Office, with a further 20 families routed through the PCT system — a filing footprint consistent with aerospace and turbine-repair supply chains rather than a single-region industry.
Influence sits with two decades-old repair patents
The five most-cited records in the corpus are all thermal-barrier and repair-process patents carrying citation counts above 100, with no recent filing approaching that weight — a strong marker of where the foundational, hard-to-avoid claims live.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to cold spray additive advanced materials, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is active, and where they are not filing anymore
Recent-year momentum across the largest historical filers has flattened to zero, and the strongest co-filing relationships point to a small cluster of aerospace and academic partners rather than a broad industry consortium.
The historical leaders have stopped filing
Organisations including United Technologies, CSIRO, General Electric, Canada's National Research Council, Westinghouse Electric and Siemens Westinghouse Power all show zero filings in the most recent year, despite being among the corpus's largest historical contributors.
A small, aerospace-and-academia cluster
The strongest recurring pairings link Pratt & Whitney Canada with McGill University and with Concordia University, each appearing three times — a pattern consistent with turbine-repair R&D run jointly with local academic partners rather than open industry collaboration.
A concentrated but not monopolised field
With 170 families spread across a mix of turbine OEMs, national research bodies and universities, no single assignee dominates outright, but the largest historical filers account for a disproportionate share of the corpus's cited weight.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| United Technologies Corporation | 0 | — |
| Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) | 0 | — |
| General Electric Company | 0 | — |
| National Research Council Canada | 0 | — |
| Westinghouse Electric Corporation | 0 | — |
| Siemens Westinghouse Power Corporation | 0 | — |
| Sulzer Metco (US) Inc. | 0 | — |
| Pratt & Whitney Canada | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to a field with settled foundational claims and quieter recent filing — here is where that leaves a team evaluating freedom to operate or new filing opportunities.
Map your own claim language against the cited baseline
Run the specific feedstock, nozzle or process claims you're drafting against the highest-cited repair and thermal-barrier patents before investing in drafting time.
Explore prior art with EurekaWatch for renewed filing from quiet former leaders
Several major historical assignees show zero recent filings — a return to activity from any of them would be a meaningful signal worth tracking.
Set up assignee tracking in EurekaTest the under-claimed branches for freedom to operate
Graded feedstock blends and deposition quality feedback show comparatively thin dedicated coverage in this corpus and may offer more open drafting room than the core coating claims.
Run a white space search in EurekaCommon questions about cold spray additive manufacturing patents
Cold spray additive manufacturing builds or repairs metal parts by accelerating solid feedstock particles to high velocity and bonding them on impact with a substrate, without melting the material. This sets it apart from laser powder bed fusion or directed energy deposition, which rely on a melt pool and therefore introduce thermal stresses, porosity risk and heat-affected zones that cold spray largely avoids. Because there is no melt phase, cold spray is widely used for repair of high-value components like turbine blades, where preserving the base material's microstructure matters as much as adding new material.
The corpus's most-cited foundational patents, including several repair-process and thermal-barrier coating patents from the early 2000s, trace back to major aerospace and industrial names such as United Technologies, General Electric and Westinghouse Electric, alongside national research bodies like Canada's National Research Council and CSIRO. Notably, recent-year filing momentum across these historically dominant assignees has dropped to zero, meaning the current landscape's most active filers may not match its most-cited ones. Anyone assessing 'leadership' in this space should separate historical citation weight from present filing activity.
Filing peaked at 35 families in 2018 and had fallen to a midpoint of 5 by 2022, with the 2026 count so far at just 2. This pattern is typical of a technology where the core claim territory around feedstock composition, nozzle design and deposition parameters was staked out early, leaving less obviously patentable ground for new entrants. It does not mean commercial or research activity has stopped; publication lag of roughly 18 months also means the most recent one to two years understate true filing volume, but the multi-year downward trend predates that lag effect.
Based on IPC classification density, the heaviest claim coverage sits in coating and surface deposition (C23C, present in 165 of 170 families) and powder metallurgy (B22F, 57 families), while dedicated additive-manufacturing classification (B33Y) appears in only 22. That gap suggests areas like multi-material graded feedstock blends, in-situ deposition quality feedback, and nozzle wear-compensation control are comparatively under-claimed relative to core spray and coating chemistry. Any freedom-to-operate search should still be run against the specific claim language of the highest-cited patents before relying on classification density alone.
US12233456B1, granted in February 2025, claims a specific method that models a single deposited line of cold-sprayed material and uses that characterisation to select a deposition path for a full additive build — it does not claim cold spray deposition generally. Anyone using cold spray without that specific line-characterisation-to-path-planning step is working outside its claim scope, though the surrounding art, including the much older and heavily cited repair-process patents, still needs separate clearance. A freedom-to-operate opinion should treat this patent as narrow and route-specific rather than as a blanket barrier to entry.
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Disclaimer. This page is generated from Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent and scientific-literature records, and is provided for general information and reference only.
Patent data carries inherent limitations: recent filings (typically the most recent 18–24 months) are under-counted due to standard publication lag; counts may be reported at either a patent-family or a patent-record basis and are not always directly comparable; classification, applicant-name, and citation data may contain errors, duplicates, or omissions; and the underlying search query defines and constrains the scope shown. As a result, the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing on this page constitutes an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate, or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial, investment, or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Any patent, commercial, or strategic decision should be verified independently and reviewed with qualified patent, legal, and domain professionals. Patsnap makes no warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose of the information presented.
Machine translation. Assignee and organisation names originally recorded in Chinese, Japanese or Korean have been rendered into English by an AI translation step so that the tables stay readable. These renderings are best-effort and may not match a company’s registered English name; the original name is what the underlying patent record carries, and it is what any Eureka query launched from this page uses.