Manufacturing of Smart Polymer Nanocomposites via Physical Methods

Nature is full of examples of smart or stimuli-responsive materials. Leaves of the Dionaea muscipula (venus flytrap) can capture insects, leaflets of Codariocalyx motorius and Helianthus annuus can rotate under exposure to sunlight, leaves of Mimosa pudica can collapse when shaken or touched and Chamaeleonidae or Octopoda change their color depending on the environmental condition or situation. These natural phenomena have attracted the attention of researchers for a long time, and various attempts have been made to imitate this behavior using synthetic materials. In this sense, the synthesis, properties, and application of stimuli-responsive polymers have become one of the most important research lines of polymer science. Smart polymers or stimuli-responsive polymers undergo large reversible changes, either physical or chemical, in their properties as a consequence of small environmental variations. They can respond to a single stimulus or multiple stimuli such as temperature, pH, electric or magnetic field, light intensity, biological molecules, etc., that induce macroscopic responses in the material, such as swelling/collapse or solution-to-gel transitions, depending on the physical state of the chains. The addition of nanofillers can enhance the performance of stimuli-responsive polymers (e.g., shape stabilization, shape recovery, self-healing ability) due to high specific surface area, nucleation effects, reinforcement effects, and intrinsic functions (e.g., thermal conductivity, electrical conductivity). This research work tries to provide a wide review of physical methods of nanomaterial and smart polymer nanocomposite preparation.