Introduction to Active Smart Materials for Biomedical Applications

Smart Materials, with their ability to change some of their properties in response to an external stimulus or to changes in conditions of their surrounding environment, have gained considerable attention in the biomedical community because of the interest in applications that could be foreseen for them in a multitude of active structures and devices.

A short introduction to Smart Materials is given in this chapter as well as some summary of recent achievements in biomedicine is also given. An overview of the different classes of Smart Materials, with a special emphasis on smart polymers is presented and classification is proposed based on the different chemistry. Biomedical applications of selected Smart Materials are also considered.