Polymeric foams or cellular or expanded polymers have characteristics that makes their usage possible for several industrial and household purposes. This book is focused on the recent advancements in the synthesis of polymer foams, various foaming methods, foaming technology, mechanical and physical properties, and the wide variety of its applications. Divided into 11 chapters, it explains empirical models connecting the geometrical structure of foams with their properties including structure-property relations. This book: Describes functional foams, their manufacturing methods, properties, and applications. Covers various blowing agents, greener methods for foaming, and their emerging applicability. Illustrates comparative information regarding polymeric foams and their recent developments with polymer nanocomposite foams. Includes applications in mechanical, civil, biomedical, food packaging, electronics, health care industry, and acoustics fields. Reviews elastomeric foams and their nanocomposite derivatives. This book is aimed at researchers and graduate students in materials science, mechanical engineering, and polymer science.

Advances in nanotechnology have boosted the development of more efficient materials, with emerging sectors (electronics, energy, aerospace, etc.) demanding novel materials to fulfill the complex technical requirements of their products. This is the case of polymeric foams, which may display good structural properties alongside functional characteristics through a complex composition and (micro)structure in which a gas phase is combined with rigid ones, mainly based on nanoparticles, dispersed throughout the polymer matrix. In recent years, there has been an important impulse in the development of nanocomposite foams, extending the concept of nanocomposites to the field of cellular materials. This, alongside developments in new advanced foaming technologies which have allowed the generation of foams with micro, sub-micro, and even nanocellular structures, has extended the applications of more traditional foams in terms of weight reduction, damping, and thermal and/or acoustic insulation to novel possibilities, such as electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding. This Special Issue, which consists of a total of 22 articles, including one review article written by research groups of experts in the field, considers recent research on novel polymer-based foams in all their aspects: design, composition, processing and fabrication, microstructure, characterization and analysis, applications and service behavior, recycling and reuse, etc.

"Polymeric foams or cellular or expanded polymers have characteristics that makes their usage possible in several industrial and household purposes. This book is focused on the recent advancements in the synthesis of polymer foams, various foaming methods, foaming technology, mechanical and physical properties, and its wide variety of its applications. Divided into fourteen chapters, it explains empirical models connecting geometrical structure of foams with their properties including structure property relations. Features: Provides description of functional foams, their manufacturing methods, properties, and applications. Covers various blowing agents, greener methods for foaming and its emerging applicability. Illustrates comparative information regarding polymeric foams and its recent developments with polymer nanocomposite foams. Includes applications in mechanical, civil, biomedical, food packaging, electronics, health care industry, acoustics fields. Reviews elastomeric foams and their nanocomposite derivatives. This book aims at researchers, graduate students in materials science, mechanical engineering, and polymer science"--

Admired for their extraordinary stimuli-sensitive behavior and shape-changing capabilities, shape-memory polymers (SMPs) and multifunctional composites are among the most important smart materials. They continue to be widely applied in many diverse fields to create things such as self-deployable spacecraft structures, morphing structures, SMP foams

Approx.964 pagesApprox.964 pages

A one-of-a-kind exploration of the fundamentals of functional polymer foams, including their fabrication and a variety of their most common applications In Functional Polymer Foams: Green Fabrication Methods, Performance and Applications, distinguished researcher Dr. Hao-Yang Mi delivers an up-to-date and incisive discussion of the fundamentals of functional polymer foams, as well as their fabrication methods and a diverse set of applications. The author covers a variety of the material’s applications, including energy absorption, acoustic absorption, superhydrophobic materials, tissue engineering scaffolding, flexible sensors, and solar steam generation. Readers will find comprehensive summaries of the mechanisms, fabrication methods, and relative performance of various polymer foams, as well as: A thorough introduction to functional polymer foams, including the fundamentals of SCF foaming Comprehensive explorations of energy absorbing polymer foams, including mechanisms of action, testing, and characterization Practical discussions of functional polymer foams used in thermal insulation, including their fabrication Complete treatments of acoustic absorption polymer foams and superhydrophobic foams, including advanced applications Perfect for polymer chemists, materials scientists, and researchers working in the sensor industry, Functional Polymer Foams will also benefit sensor developers and electronics engineers with an interest in the fabrication methods and applications of functional polymer foams.

Applications of Multifunctional Nanomaterials showcases the major applications of highly correlated nanosystems that highlight the multifunctionality of nanomaterials. This includes applications of nanomaterials in spintronics, information storage, magnetic data storage and memory device applications, energy harvesting applications using nanomultiferroics with piezoelectric polymers, nonlinear optical limiting applications using graphene or ferrite nanoparticles, soft tissues applications, EMI shielding applications and even applications in sunscreen lotions, cosmetics and food packaging will be discussed. In addition, nanoparticle incorporation in animal nutrition intended for increased productivity is an innovative and groundbreaking theme of the book. Finally, functionalized magnetic nanoparticles for drug delivery, magnetic hyperthermia, sutures, cancer therapy, dentistry and other biomedical and bio-engineering applications using nanoparticles are discussed in detail. - Explains the major design and fabrication techniques and processes for a range of multifunctional nanomaterials and nanotechnologies - Demonstrates how ferromagnetics, multiferroics and carbon nanomaterials are designed for electronic and optical applications - Assesses the major challenges of using multifunctional nanomaterials on a mass scale