[Report] Smart Materials

Smart materials are the next frontier in engineering and manufacturing. Discover the state of the art in this emerging technology, and our assessment of its market potential. Position you company to take full advantage of countless lucrative opportunities.

What are they? Materials that respond to changes in temperature, moisture, pH, or electric and magnetic fields. Smart materials are poised to emerge from the lab in a wide range of medical, defense and industrial applications. Understanding and using these advanced materials in your new product development efforts may make the difference between success and failure in today's intensely competitive markets.

What are the most promising materials for specific applications? When would you use a shape memory alloy but not a smart polymer? What size of a market lies in wait for ER Fluids? Who are the primary laboratories and companies developing these materials? Who are the key researchers and engineers? Does it make technical and economic sense to fit a smart material in a given machine? With smart materials research taking place in hundreds of public and private sector labs across the globe, the answers to questions like these are difficult to find - yet they are vital if you are to make the decisions that will enable you and your company to profit from new developments in this fast moving field.

Get quickly up to speed on these emerging technologies ...

Based on Technical Insights' close monitoring of the intensive worldwide development of smart materials, and drawing on extensive interviews and research, Smart Materials: Emerging Markets for Intelligent Gels, Ceramics, Alloys, and Polymers brings you a comprehensive overview of the technology and its current and potential markets.

You'll get a clear understanding of smart materials technology, the advantages and disadvantages it offers over traditional materials and engineering and manufacturing techniques.

You'll gain valuable insight into the research that is under way - who is working on what, how are they progressing, which applications show the most promise, and what obstacles still remain to be overcome before commercialization can begin.

You'll discover the prospects for smart materials in the marketplace, and pinpoint potentially lucrative opportunities to exploit these innovative technologies.

An A-to-Z guide to smart materials ...

Smart Materials: Emerging Markets for Intelligent Gels, Ceramics, Alloys, and Polymers is your guide to the world of smart materials. In one handy volume it will give you a hard-headed assessment of new applications and markets ... And brief you on important develop-ments related to dozens of materials in a wide range of categories, including:

Piezoelectric materials - These ceramics or polymers are character-ized by a swift, linear shape change in response to an electric field. The electricity makes the material expand or contract almost instantly. The materials have potential uses in actuators that control chatter in precision machine tools, improved robotic parts that move faster and with greater accuracy, smaller microelectronic circuits in machines ranging from computers to photolithography printers, and health-monitoring fibers for bridges, buildings, and wood utility poles.
Electrostrictive and magnetostrictive materials - This refers to the material quality of changing size in response to either an electric or magnetic field, and conversely, producing a voltage when stretched. These materials show promise in applications ranging from pumps and valves, to aerospace wind tunnel and shock tube instrumentation and landing gear hydraulics, to biomechanics force measurement for ortho-pedic gait and posturography, sports, ergonomics, neurology, cardiology, and rehabilitation.
Rheological materials - Smart materials encompass not only solids but also fluids, electrorheological and magnetorheological fluids that can change state instantly through the application of an electric or magnetic charge. These fluids show promise in shock absorbers, dampers for vehicle seats and exercise equipment, and optical finishing.
Thermoresponsive materials - Shape memory alloys, the dominant smart material, change shape in response to heat or cold. They are most commonly Nitinol, or nickel and titanium combined. Less popular but still possessing the shape memory effect are gold cadmium, silver cad-mium, copper-aluminum-nickel, copper tin, copper zinc, and copper zinc aluminum. They are useful in couplers, thermostats, automobile, plane and helicopter parts.
pH-sensitive materials - The most interesting of these are indicators that change colors as a function of pH, and show promise in paints that change color when the metal beneath begins to corrode.
Electrochromic materials - Electrochromism is defined as the ability of a material to change its optical properties when a voltage is applied across it. These materials are used as antistatic layers, electrochrome layers in LCDs (liquid crystal displays), and cathodes in lithium batteries.
Fullerenes - Spherically caged molecules with carbon atoms at the corner of a polyhedral structure consisting of pentagons and hexagons. In one application of fullerenes as a smart material, they are embedded into sol-gel matrices to enhance optical limiting properties.
Smart gels - Engineered response gels that shrink or swell by a factor of 1000, and that can be programmed to absorb or release fluids in response to almost any chemical or physical stimulus. These gels are used in many appli-cations in agriculture, food, drug delivery, prostheses, cosmetics, and chemical processing.
And many more.

Smart Materials:
Emerging Markets for Intelligent Gels, Ceramics, Alloys, and Polymers was produced by Technical Insights, a unit of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Founded in 1807, John Wiley & Sons is an independent publishing company, whose subscription services, journals, textbooks, and educational materials are used by scientists, business people and students around the world. In 1996, Wiley acquired Technical Insights, which serves corporations worldwide with its printed and electronic intelligence services and reports.
Since 1971, thousands of executives and managers have relied on Technical Insights to identify emerging technologies and analyze their commercial impact. Today, the resources of these two leading organizations are multiplied by their new association.

An introduction to the key players in the field ...

In addition, Smart Materials simplifies your task of identifying the leading players in the field and discovering opportu-nities for licensing, partnering, or co-developing. Contact details of more than 80 researchers and developers working in this exiting field will provide you with the equipment, facilities, consultations, licenses, and partnership opportunities you need. You get capsule profiles complete with names, addresses, phone numbers, e-mail addresses, plus details on which organizations are seeking licensing or partnering opportunities.

Review Smart Materials: Emerging Markets for Intelligent Gels, Ceramics, Alloys, and Polymers - at no risk!

We are confident that this report will live up to your expectations. It's a promise from Technical Insights/John Wiley & Sons, Inc., a firm with a 190-year reputation for excellence in technical publishing: