Shashwat Vimalkumar Joshi

Government Engineering College, Sector-28, Gandhinagar, Gujarat, India.

New materials named ‘Smart materials’ are developed  which have one or more properties that can be significantly altered in a controlled manner by exterior stimuli, such as stress, temperature, moisture, pH, electric or magnetic fields. Smart materials mostly consist of shape memory alloys and polymers, automatic actuators, piezoelectric materials, pH-sensitive polymers, chromogenic systems, self-healing systems. The property that can be altered influences what types of applications the smart material can be used for. The best way to understand the smart material concept is to look at its uses. Smart materials may work completely on their own or as part of a larger smart system. For example, doctors may use shape memory alloy staples used to set broken bones. In this case, the material works as both a sensor and an actuator as the patient’s body heat activate the staple to close and thereby clamp the break together. In the last decade, a wide range of novel smart materials have been produced for aerospace, materials science, sensing and actuation, optics, electromagnetic structures, control and engineering, information processing and so forth. Furthermore there is increased activity in integrating smart materials with nanotechnology and nanoscience to develop novel materials for the applications in nanomaterials, nanomedicine, nanoelectronics and molecular nanotechnology (Molecular assembler, nonorobotics, mechanosynthesis, nanofoundry and nanoreactor). Nanofoundry is a foundry that performs at scale similar to nanotechnology. The closest thing that nature has to a nanofoundry is the simplest biological cell. Nanotechnology would permit control of matter at the level of atoms and molecules which would form the building blocks of smart materials. In more the field of Smart Materials and Nanotechnology is very diverse with application ranging from bioengineering to photonics.

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