Advances in Materials Science and Engineering

Volume 2014 (2014), Article ID 517342, 1 page

http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2014/517342

Editorial

Advances in Smart Materials and Applications

Kuan Yew Cheong,¹ Kean Aw,² Khasan S. Karimov,³ Feng Zhao,⁴ Mohammad Mahroof-Tahir,⁵ and Rupert Schreiner⁶

¹School of Materials & Mineral Resources Engineering, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Malaysia

²Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Auckland, New Zealand

³Faculty of Electronic Engineering of GIK Institute, Pakistan

⁴Department of Electrical Engineering, Washington State University, Vancouver, WA 98686, USA

⁵Department of Chemistry and Earth Sciences, Qatar University, Qatar

⁶Faculty of General Studies & Microsystems, Regensburg University of Applied Sciences, Germany

Received 1 April 2014; Accepted 1 April 2014; Published 15 April 2014

Copyright © 2014 Kuan Yew Cheong et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

This is one of a series of special issues published in Advances in Materials Science and Engineering, focusing on the latest advances of smart materials and their applications.

Evolution of engineering materials is strongly depending on the growing transformation of complexity in engineering products. New materials being designed are required to provide specific properties and demonstrate certain functional characteristics by manipulating their dimension, chemistry, and structure through various advanced technologies. Therefore, “smartness” of a material has become the topic of interest. Properties of smart materials may change accordingly to the applied external stimuli.

Under the direction of the editorial team, we showcase advances of organic and inorganic based smart materials and their applications in areas of specific interest such as energy, environment, and health. A total of 9 articles are published in this special issue. Six articles are focused on production, synthesis, and optimization of smart materials; and the remaining are dedicated to application of smart materials.

Acknowledgments

We would like to express our sincere thanks to all the contributing authors for sharing their research outputs and time, thus enabling the successful accomplishment of this issue.

Kuan Yew Cheong

Kean Aw

Khasan S. Karimov

Feng Zhao

Mohammad Mahroof-Tahir

Rupert Schreiner