Almost every material electronic or non electronic, toys, dress, cosmetics etc contain polymer gel or smart gel. It was discovered by a Japanese physicist Toyoichi Tanaka. Smart gels are a class of materials that expand or contract when triggered by tiny changes in temperature, light, a solvent or other stimulus.They have the ability to reversibly swell or shrink up to 1000 times in volume due to small changes in their environment (pH, temperature,electric field). Smart gel is a material the gels in response to a specific physical property.
Micro sized gel fibres contract in milliseconds, while thick polymer layers require minutes to react(up to 2 hours or even days). They have high strength and can deliver sizeable stress(approximately equal to that of human muscles).
Polymer gels can be used to clean up pollutants or oil spills. Even in cosmetics, gels could hold and then release key ingredients like fragrance in response skin pH. In medicine gels can be used as soft valves or act as artificial muscles
