SUPER TOUGH GELS WITH A DOUBLE NETWORK STRUCTURE

 Living tissues work with fantastic functions in soft and wet gel-like state. Thus, hydrogels have attracted much attention as excellent soft & wet materials, suitable for making artificial organs for medical treatments.However, conventional hydrogels are mechanically too weak for practical uses. We have created double network (DN) hydrogels with extremely high mechanical strength in order to overcome this problem. DN gels are interpenetrating network (IPN) hydrogels consisting of rigid polyelectrolyte and soft neutral polymer. Their excellent mechanical properties cannot be explained by the standard fracture theories. In this paper, we discuss about the toughening mechanism of DN gels in accordance with their characteristic behavior, such as large hysteresis and necking phenomenon. We also describe the results on tissue engineering application of DN gels.