Advanced Shape Memory Technology for Biomedical Engineering

The ability to recover to the original shape only at the presence of the right stimulus is traditionally known as the shape memory effect (SME) [1]. The materials with such a capability are technically termed shape memory materials (SMMs) [2]. Typical SMMs include shape memory alloy (SMA) and shape memory polymer (SMP, including hydrogel), while typical stimuli are temperature (thermo-responsive, both heating or cooling), chemical (chemo-responsive, including water), light (photo-responsive) and magnetic (magneto-responsive)[3]. Although SMMs have been mostly used for actuators in the past,they have been proposed for new types of sensors as well, but not so successful till today [4-7].