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The fast growth of 3D printing technology gives designers many ways to make structures that are hard to see. 3D printing lets you customize complex structures in any way you want and make rapid prototypes of materials. It enables you to simulate things more effectively. So far, experiments with polymer‐based lubrication have been done on atomically smooth surfaces, under dynamic conditions, and on the nano‐ or micro‐scale. Polymer‐based lubrication in 3D printing has been studied in depth, which has made it possible to make significant, multifunctional 3D structures with microscale accuracy. It is a crucial way to approach lubrication and has sparked much scientific interest. A thorough literature review is done to keep track of the latest advances in 3D printing for structural polymer‐based lubrication simulation. The design and lubrication performance quality of bio‐inspired, different‐sized simulation structures is given much attention. The material requirements, skills, and representative applications of various 3D printing technologies are summarized. The efficient directions for future research in designing and making 3D‐printed lubrication structures are also pointed out.

Polyimide (PI) aerogels with excellent mechanical and thermal stability, low density, and flexibility have attracted extensive attention in recent years. However, the existing preparation method usually requires chemical pre‐crosslinking followed by supercritical drying or freeze drying, and then thermal imidization, which has the weakness of a complicated preparation method and high cost. In this study, PI aerogels were prepared by a simple method that involved freeze extraction and chemical imidization, which exhibited low density (0.14 g cm−3), high porosity (85.61%), excellent thermal stability (T5% and Tg were 418.12 and 230.60°C, respectively), shape fidelity, and compressibility. Furthermore, this method regulated the pore size, such as the macro/microstructure, and then used the PI aerogel ink to build complex architectures by 3D printing. As a proof of concept, pyramids, multilayer grids, ring‐hole disks, Chinese knots and cuboids were printed, and all of them exhibited the shape fidelity property after freeze‐extraction and chemical imidization. Therefore, we believe this novel preparation method enables significant promotion of the application potential of PI aerogels and 3D printing.

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