Smart Materials

Types of Smart Materials

Smart materials, called also intelligent or responsive materials are designed materials that have one or more properties that can be significantly changed in a controlled fashion by external stimuli, such as stress, moisture, electric or magnetic fields, light, temperature, pH, or chemical compounds. Smart materials are the basis of many applications, including sensors and actuators, or artificial muscles, particularly as electro active polymers

Terms used to describe smart materials include shape memory material (SMM) and shape memory technology (SMT)

There are a number of types of smart material, of which are already common. Some examples are as following:

• Piezoelectric
• Shape-memory alloys
• optoelectronics
• Electro active polymers
• Magnetostrictive
• Smart inorganic polymers
•  pH-sensitive polymers
•  Temperature-responsive polymers
• Chromogenic systems
• Ferro fluids
• Photomechanical materials
•  Polycaprolactone
• Self-healing materials
• Dielectric elastomers
• Magnetocaloric materials
•  Thermoelectric materials
•  Chemo responsive materials

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