Doc Brown's Chemistry Revision Notes - Smart Materials and Materials Science

What are smart materials? Why are they so useful? Applications - what are they used for?

ALPHABETICAL LIST of materials, effects etc. mentioned on these pages: Smart Materials Science INDEX * CARBON FIBRES * CHROMOGENIC MATERIALS * ELECTROCHROMIC MATERIALS * GORETEX * HALOCHROMIC MATERIALS  * HIGH PERFORMANCE POLYMERS * KEVLAR * LYCRA * MAGNETIC SHAPE MEMORY ALLOYS * MAGNETOSTRICTIVE MATERIALS * NITINOL * pH SENSITIVE POLYMERS * PHOTOCHROMIC MATERIALS * PHOTOMECHANICAL MATERIALS * PIEZO ELECTRIC EFFECT-MATERIALS * PTFE * SELF-HEALING MATERIALS * SHAPE MEMORY ALLOYS * SHAPE MEMORY POLYMERS * SPANDEX * TEFLON * TEMPERATURE-RESPONSIVE POLYMERS * THERMOCHROMIC MATERIALS * THINSULATE *

INTRODUCTION TO SMART MATERIALS

• Smart materials are materials that have a property that can be significantly changed in a controlled way by an external stimuli, such as stress (i.e. bending or compression), light, temperature, moisture, pH, electric potential difference (p.d./voltage) or a strong magnetic field.

• Smart materials are those that change in response to changing conditions in their surroundings or by the application of other direct influences e.g. passing an electric charge through the material, or changing the pH of a surrounding aqueous solution.. 

• The induced change might be electrical, mechanical-structural, optical, magnetic etc. to change the way the material functions in response to the stimulus).

• In a 'nutshell' smart materials can change their state, and therefore their properties, in response to an external stimulus.

• There is now a huge variety of smart materials with different special properties that make a particular material well suited to a particular use.

• Other materials described on this page are not strictly speaking 'smart materials', but they have been included under the more general heading' materials science'.

Examples of Smart Materials and 'smart effects' and other examples of 'Materials Science'

PART 1 CHROMOGENIC MATERIALS - Thermochromic, Photochromic & Electrochromic Materials

PART 2 SHAPE MEMORY ALLOYS e.g. Nitinol & Magnetic Shape Memory Alloys

PART 3 SHAPE MEMORY POLYMERS, pH and temperature sensitive-responsive polymers, Self-healing materials

Part 4 LYCRA-SPANDEX

PART 5 High performance polymers like KEVLAR

PART 6 GORETEX, THINSULATE and TEFLON-PTFE

PART 7 PIEZOELECTRIC EFFECT (PIEZOELECTRIC MATERIALS) and PHOTOMECHANICAL MATERIALS

PART 8 CARBON FIBRES

Revise for KS4 Science GCSE/IGCSE/O level Chemistry Revision Notes for information studying revising for AQA GCSE Science, Edexcel 360 Science/IGCSE Chemistry & OCR 21stC Science, OCR Gateway Science  (and courses equal to US grades 9-10) and Revision notes for GCE Advanced Subsidiary Level AS Advanced Level A2 IB Revise AQA OCR Edexcel Salters CIE revising courses for pre-university pre-U students (equal to US grade 11 and grade 12 and Honours/honors level courses)

More on polymers GCSE notes poly(ethene), poly(propene), polystyrene, PVC

and GCSE Notes on Nylon, Terylene and A Level Notes on poly(propene)

NANOMATERIALS including carbon nanotubes, carbon fibres and silver nanoparticles are on a separate page

More on chemistry applications: Uses of 220+ chemical elements, compounds, mixtures & Formulation chemistry

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