University of Waterloo engineering researchers have found a new "smart materials" process named Multiple Memory Material Technology that could change the manufacture of diverse products like medical devices, microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), printers, hard drives, automotive components, valves and actuators.
The penetrating technology will offer engineers with much more freedom and creativity by allowing far better functionality that can be integrated into medical devices such as stents, braces and hearing aids.
Smart materials, also called shape memory alloys, have been used since many years and are renowned for their ability to remember a pre-determined shape. Older memory materials remember one shape at one temperature and a second shape at a different temperature. Now with the new Waterloo technology they can remember multiple different memories, each one with a different shape.
Ibraheem Khan said, "This ground-breaking technology makes smart materials even smarter. We have developed a technology that embeds several memories in a monolithic smart material. In essence, a single material can be programmed to remember more shapes, making it smarter than previous technologies,”
The pending technology is available for licensing. It permits almost any memory material to be rapidly and simply embedded with additional local memories.
The transition zone area can be as small as a few microns in width with multiple zones, each having a discrete transition temperature. As the processed shape memory material is subject to changing temperature, each treated zone will change shape at its respective transition temperature.
Along with this, transition zones developed side-by-side lets a unique and smooth shape change with the changing temperature. To demonstrate this technology, many prototypes have been developed.