Smart material

Smart materials, also called intelligent or responsive materials, are designed materials that have one or more properties that can be significantly changed in a controlled fashion by external stimuli, such as stress, moisture, electric or magnetic fields, light, temperature, pH, or chemical compounds. Smart materials are the basis of many applications, including sensors and actuators, or artificial muscles, particularly as electroactive polymers (EAPs).
Terms used to describe smart materials include shape memory material (SMM) and shape memory technology (SMT).
Types.
There are a number of types of smart material, of which are already common. Some examples are as following:
Smart materials have properties that react to changes in their environment. This means that one of their properties can be changed by an external condition, such as temperature, light, pressure, electricity, voltage, pH, or chemical compounds. This change is reversible and can be repeated many times.
There is a wide range of different smart materials. Each offer different properties that can be changed. Some materials are very good and cover a huge range of the scales.