Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston, MA, has announced the discovery of a new category of shape-memory materials that could open up a new range of applications, especially for high-temperature settings, such as actuators inside a jet engine or a deep borehole.

Shape-memory metals have long been used as simple actuators in a variety of devices but are limited by the achievable service temperatures of the metals used, usually a few hundred degrees Celsius at most. Ceramics can withstand much higher temperatures, sometimes up to thousands of degrees, but are known for their brittleness. Now, the MIT team has found a way to overcome that and produce a ceramic material that can actuate without accumulating damage, thus making it possible for it to function reliably as a shape-memory material through many cycles of use.

Read further here: https://news.mit.edu/2022/shape-memory-material-ceramic-1005