Table 1.

Summary of reported methods of fabricating porous SMP materials.

Fabrication Technique	Advantages	Disavantages	Notable Shape Memory Attributes	Notable Physical Properties	Proposed Applications
Gas Foaming	Proven large-scale viability in industry	Potential toxicity of foaming agents	Up to 70x volume expansion reported[35]	Pore size: 100 nm – 1 mm Rel. density:0.013 – 0.90	Aneurysm occlusion, actuator in aerospace applications
Particulate Leaching	Easy to perform, pore size easily ontrolled	Limited control of structure because of non-uniform salt distribution	Generally exhibit excellent shape recovery (>95% recoverable strain)	Salt fusion or centrifugation can enable open cellular ontent > 90%[26]	Bone tissue, cardiovascular scaffolds
Electro-spinning	High achievable porosities and high surface-to-volume ratios	Poor mechanical integrity, difficulty controlling micro achitecture	Two-way shape memory reported for several electrospun SMPs[32]	Can influence cell orientation upon geometry change	Wound healing, tissue regeneration, drug delivery,
Phase Separation	High level of control over porosity and pore morphology	Limited pore sizes are achievable	Limited shape recovery reported in some studies[40]	Cellular morphology generally open porous	Tissue regeneration, drug delivery, higher drug encapsulation efficiency
Emulsion Templating	Generates open cellular morphology	Can require significant amounts of surfactants	Used to create acrylic SMPs that utilize the Tm of long alkyl side chain[100]	Low densities achievable	Catalysis, chromatography
Solid State Foaming	Proceeds without blowing agent or liquid-state process	Only higher-density foams achievable (0.3-0.7g/cm3)[51]	Generally higher recovery stresses that most other porous SMPs	Significantly higher toughness and modulus than most porous SMPs	Expandable/deployable space structures