6 - Smart Polymers

Abstract

Polymer materials, in their early days, were mostly studied for use as static structural parts. However, in the last decades, advanced multifunctional polymers able to interact with the external conditions have attracted more and more attention. At the same time, in recent years, the increase in life expectancy has led to a growing demand for both new materials and new technologies. Moreover, due to the outstanding properties of natural materials, scientists try to imitate and to follow the principles that nature has developed over millions of years in order to design new bio-inspired materials. To this regard, one of the most inspiring properties is the capability of the material to change specific properties upon the application of an external stimulus, obtaining shape memory materials. In this chapter the attention will be focused on different shape memory polymeric materials, in particular on the stimuli-responsive materials in smart packaging, on the principles of shape memory polymer-based materials, on self-healing polymers, and on hydrogels.