A REVIEW ON INITIATION, STRUCTURE AND ADVANCE UTILIZATION OF SHAPE MEMORY POLYMER

Abstract

Shape-memory polymers (SMPs) are stimuli-responsive shape-varying polymers. Now a days they become a great interest for fundamental research and technological innovation. Here a brief review of the recent trends in the arena of SMPs is presented with particular focus on their structure, shape-memory effects and practical application. A special attention is given to smart multi-responsive and multi-functional advanced SMP materials as they are of emerging technological class. Important applications of SMP in the field of biomedical engineering, polymer domain, and material replacement are explained in the applications part. Traditional shape memory polymers (SMPs) are those which are capable of memorizing a temporary shape and recovering to the initial shape upon heating. Though SMP is old concept initiated half a century ago but its applications in variety of fields is the topic where it’s lagging. As such, the intent of the present paper isn’t to supply an intensive review of the SMP analysis. Instead, the main focus is on light samples of recently emerged from memory phenomena, their thoughtful impact to the sector of SMP on each scientific and sensible fronts, and future outlook.