Smart Materials

Smart Materials or we can say "Intelligent" material is capable of spontaneously changing its physical properties (notably its shape, chemical, structural, viscosity etc..) in response to natural or provoked excitation. These can come from outside or inside the smart materials: temperature variations, mechanical constraints, electric, light response, piezoelectric or magnetic fields. This generation smart pigments and dyes is opposed to conventional materials, which are inert by definition, and whose properties always remain the same regardless of the stresses to which the material is subjected. Smart materials able to adapt its response, to signal a modification in the environment and, in some cases, to take corrective action it can behave like a sensor, an actuator or like a processor. 

One of the most important families of smart products is the X-chrome materials. These smart materials have the ability to change color in response of an external excitation: temperature, light, pressure, humidity, etc. The color of these materials becomes "adaptive/interactive" with reversible, irreversible or memory effect properties. It is thus possible to detect by a simple change of color structural weaknesses in the coating, a temperature threshold exceeded to signal the risk of burning. 

Application of Smart Material 

Intelligent materials are growing, as is the field of applications in industry, housing, medicine, biology and leisure. This is a real revolution on the scale of materials that will rapidly change our daily lives. Some smart materials are, for example, sensitive to glucose for controlled release of insulin, or in response to an electric or magnetic fields for drug delivery. In the field of construction and energy improvement, some ionic polymers allow access to intelligent glazing. A smart glass is able to become opaque or transparent in a few seconds for better light management in a building.