**Preface to "Smart Textile and Polymer Materials"**

Smart or intelligent structures are those that are either solely capable of sensing changes in their environment or have the dual functionality of not only detecting various stimuli in their environment but are also able to respond to these changes in their environment. Smart textiles are a kind of smart fabric or material that have the capability to physically respond to their environment or external stimuli in their behavior, such as electrical, size, optical, chemical, biochemical triggers or enzymatic activity. Smart textiles can maintain some of the intrinsic properties of traditional textiles when their environment or external stimuli change. In general, smart textiles can be created by coating smart polymers in industrial technologies, forming polymer network structures; this can be achieved through crosslinking around the fibers of fabrics.

This book, entitled "Smart Textile and Polymer Materials", is dedicated to recent research and development regarding smart textiles and response-based polymer materials, including, but not limited to, fiber-based energy harvesting devices, energy storage devices, chromatic devices, color and shape changes, sensing, drug release, and ultraviolet resistant, electrically conductive, optical, hydrophobic and flame-retardant materials. Papers concerning thermal-responsive polymers, moisture-responsive polymers, thermal-responsive hydrogels, pH-responsive hydrogels, and light-responsive polymers here presented are from the field of smart textiles, as well as fabrication procedures and application characteristics of multifunctional fiber devices such as fiber-shaped solar cells, lithium–ion batteries, actuators and electrochromic fibers.

This book will provide a premier interdisciplinary platform for researchers from universities, research centers, and industry working on smart textiles and polymers around the world to share the latest results, the most recent innovations, trends, and concerns as well as the synthesis and characterization of smart materials in their applications in basic and industrial processes.

> **Yang Zhou and Zhaoling Li** *Editors*
