Smart Materials and Their Applications

These flashcards cover key vocabulary related to smart materials and their properties, processing, and applications.

Smart Materials

Materials that respond and adapt to environmental changes through stimuli like temperature, pressure, electricity, and light.

Piezoelectric Materials

Materials that convert mechanical stress into electrical energy and vice versa, discovered by Pierre and Jacques Curie.

Direct Piezoelectric Effect

The ability of piezoelectric materials to generate electrical voltage when mechanical stress is applied.

Inverse Piezoelectric Effect

The property of piezoelectric materials that change shape when an electric field is applied.

Processing of Piezoelectric Materials

Involves mixing, shaping, sintering to form crystals, and poling to align internal dipoles.

Photochromic Materials

Materials that change color in response to light and revert to their original color in darkness.

Thermochromic Materials

Temperature-sensitive materials that change color reversibly with temperature changes.

Shape Memory Alloy (SMA)

Alloys that return to their original shape upon heating after being deformed.

Magnetorheological Fluids

Fluids that change viscosity in response to a magnetic field, behaving like solid under magnetic influence.

Electrochromic Materials

Materials that change optical properties, like color or transmittance, when a voltage is applied.