ABSTRACT
Scientists studying synthetic polymers found some intelligent polymers that have the capability of recovering their original shapes upon exposure to an external stimuli such as electricity (Asaka and Oguro 2000), magnetic field (Xulu et al. 2000), heat (Lendlein and Kelch 2002), moisture (Yang et al. 2006), and light (Jiang et al. 2006, Lendlein et al. 2005) that are potentially very useful for a variety of applications, 448including aerospace, automotive, and some related to biotechnology and biomedical engineering. Smart polymers are becoming increasingly more prevalent as scientists learn about the chemistry and triggers that induce conformational changes in polymer structures and devise ways to take advantage of and control them. In this relatively new area of polymer technology, the potential aerospace, mechanical, chemical, and biomedical engineering uses for smart polymers appear to be limitless. There have been a substantial development of a variety of shape memory polymer (SMP) materials during recent years, and the shape recovery of process has been significantly enhanced and multi-SMPs have been produced (Xie 2010).
