Badami Vijetha, Ahuja Bharat
Department of Conservative Dentistry and Endodontics, A.M.E'S Dental College, Hospital and Research centre, Bijengere Road, Raichur 584103, India.
ScientificWorldJournal. 2014 Feb 2;2014:986912. doi: 10.1155/2014/986912. eCollection 2014.
By definition and general agreement, smart materials are materials that have properties which may be altered in a controlled fashion by stimuli, such as stress, temperature, moisture, pH, and electric or magnetic fields. There are numerous types of smart materials, some of which are already common. Examples include piezoelectric materials, which produce a voltage when stress is applied or vice versa, shape memory alloys or shape memory polymers which are thermoresponsive, and pH sensitive polymers which swell or shrink as a response to change in pH. Thus, smart materials respond to stimuli by altering one or more of their properties. Smart behaviour occurs when a material can sense some stimulus from its environment and react to it in a useful, reliable, reproducible, and usually reversible manner. These properties have a beneficial application in various fields including dentistry. Shape memory alloys, zirconia, and smartseal are examples of materials exhibiting a smart behavior in dentistry. There is a strong trend in material science to develop and apply these intelligent materials. These materials would potentially allow new and groundbreaking dental therapies with a significantly enhanced clinical outcome of treatments.
根据定义和普遍共识，智能材料是指那些其性能可通过诸如应力、温度、湿度、pH值以及电场或磁场等刺激以可控方式改变的材料。智能材料有多种类型，其中一些已经很常见。例如压电材料，施加应力时会产生电压，反之亦然；形状记忆合金或形状记忆聚合物，它们对温度有响应；还有pH敏感聚合物，会随着pH值变化而膨胀或收缩。因此，智能材料通过改变其一种或多种性能来响应刺激。当一种材料能够感知来自其环境的某种刺激并以有用、可靠、可重复且通常可逆的方式对其做出反应时，就会出现智能行为。这些特性在包括牙科在内的各个领域都有有益的应用。形状记忆合金、氧化锆和智能密封材料是牙科领域中表现出智能行为的材料实例。材料科学领域有一个很强的趋势，即开发和应用这些智能材料。这些材料有可能带来全新的、开创性的牙科治疗方法，并显著提高治疗的临床效果。
