A new "smart materials" process - Multiple Memory Material Technology - developed by University of Waterloo engineering researchers promises to revolutionize the manufacture of diverse（不同的） products such as medical devices, microelectromechanical systems (MEMS微型机电系统), printers, hard drives, automotive components¹, valves（阀门，瓣膜） and actuators（制动器） . The breakthrough technology will provide engineers with much more freedom and creativity by enabling far greater functionality to be incorporated into medical devices such as stents（支架） , braces²（背带，吊带） and hearing aids than is currently possible.

Smart materials, also known as shape memory alloys³（形状记忆合金） , have been around for several decades and are well known for their ability to remember a pre-determined shape.

Traditional memory materials remember one shape at one temperature and a second shape at a different temperature. Until now they have been limited to change shape at only one temperature. Now with the new Waterloo technology they can remember multiple different memories, each one with a different shape.

"This ground-breaking technology makes smart materials even smarter," said Ibraheem Khan, a research engineer and graduate student working with Norman Zhou, a professor of mechanical and mechatronics（机电一体化） engineering. "We have developed a technology that embeds⁴（嵌入，植入） several memories in a monolithic⁵（整体的，庞大的） smart material. In essence, a single material can be programmed to remember more shapes, making it smarter than previous technologies."

The patent pending⁶ technology, which is available for licensing⁷, allows virtually any memory material to be quickly and easily embedded⁸ with additional local memories.

The transition zone area can be as small as a few microns（微米） in width with multiple zones, each having a discrete⁹（离散的） transition temperature. As the processed shape memory material is subject to changing temperature, each treated zone will change shape at its respective transition temperature. As well, transition zones created side-by-side allow for a unique and smooth shape change in response to changing temperature.

Several prototypes（原型） have been developed to demonstrate this pioneering technology.

One mimics¹⁰ a transformer robot. The robot's limbs transform with increasing temperature at discrete temperatures, whereas in conventional shape memory technology this is limited to only one transformation¹¹ temperature.