Smart materials that change form when exposed to external stimuli are nothing new. CEP has reported on several, including a liquid-crystal elastomer that curls, wrinkles, folds, and twists when heated (Jan. 2014, p. 7) and a bandage that releases medicine in response to skin temperature and lights up when the medicine is running low (Jan. 2016, pp. 9–10).
A new smart material developed by chemical engineers at the Univ. of Rochester embodies two unique qualities that make it stand out from others: The temperature at which the material changes shape can be precisely tuned, and the material can deliver a large amount of mechanical work as it transforms back to its original shape.
“Tuning the trigger temperature is only one part of the story,” says Mitch Anthamatten, a professor of chemical engineering at the Univ. of Rochester. “We also engineered these materials to store a large amount of elastic energy, enabling them to perform more mechanical work during their shape recovery.”
The new material is a type of shape-memory polymer (SMP) — a polymer network that can be temporarily deformed into an elastically strained, nonequilibrium shape. In this deformed state, the polymer holds elastic energy that is released when the material is triggered, typically by heating, to return to its original shape. SMPs morph into a...
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