A Review: On Smart Materials Based on Some Polysaccharides; within the Contextual Bigger Data, Insiders, “Improvisation” and Said Artificial Intelligence Trends

Smart Materials are along with Innovation attributes and Artificial Intelligence among the most used “buzz” words in all media. Central to their practical occurrence, many talents are to be gathered within new contextual data influxes. Has this, in the last 20 years, changed some of the essential fundamental dimensions and the required skills of the actors such as providers, users, insiders, etc.? This is a preliminary focus and prelude of this review. As an example, polysaccharide materials are the most abundant macromolecules present as an integral part of the natural system of our planet. They are renewable, biodegradable, carbon neutral with low environmental, health and safety risks and serve as structural materials in the cell walls of plants. Most of them are used, for many years, as engineering materials in many important industrial processes, such as pulp and papermaking and manufacture of synthetic textile fibres. They are also used in other domains such as conversion into biofuels and, more recently, in the design of processes using polysaccharide nanoparticles. The main properties of polysaccharides (e.g. low density, thermal stability, chemical resistance, high mechanical strength…), together with their biocompatibility, biodegradability, functionality, durability and uniformity, allow their use for manufacturing smart materials such as blends and composites, electroactive polymers and hydrogels which can be obtained 1) through direct utilization and/or 2) after chemical or physical modifications of the polysaccharides. This paper reviews recent works developed on polysaccharides, mainly on cellulose, hemicelluloses, chitin, chitosans, alginates, and their by-products (blends and composites), with the objectives of manufacturing smart materials. It is worth noting that, today, the fundamental understanding of the molecular level interactions that confer smartness to polysaccharides remains poor and one can predict that new experimental and theoretical tools will emerge to develop the necessary understanding of the structure-property-function relationships that will enable polysaccharide-smartness to be better understood and controlled, giving rise to the development of new and innovative applications such as nanotechnology, foods, cosmetics and medicine (e.g. controlled drug release and regenerative medicine) and so, opening up major commercial markets in the context of green chemistry.