Future of Smart Materials

The success of a new material is usually dependent on its applications. When ionic polymer-metal composites (IPMC) were first invented, the potential application areas were identified as biomedical and robotics, due to their resemblance to biological muscles in both properties and performances. Thus, IPMC is sometimes referred to as artificial muscles. Throughout the years, a large number of biomedical applications have been proposed, including the applications presented in Chapter 15. Recent developments in the applications of IPMC include Braille displays (Kato et al., 2007), active guide-wire system for cardiac catheterization (Fang et al., 2010) and biomimetic micro-collector for collection of particles in chronic total occlusion disease (Cho and Lee, 2009). However, continuous improvement on the controllability, stability and actuation effects of IPMC are still essential for their future applications in solving practical engineering problems.