Research progress of field-induced soft smart materials

Abstract

The field-induced soft smart materials are a kind of soft matter whose macroscopic properties (mechanical, or optical) can be significantly and actively controlled and manipulated by external fields such as magnetic field, electric field, temperature or light. In this paper, we briefly review the research and application progress of the field-induced soft smart materials in recent years and discuss the development problems and trend in this research area. In particular, we focus on three typical field-induced soft materials of smart materials: magnetorheological fluid, electrorheological fluid, and temperature and light sensitive polymer gel.