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Highly Elastic and Deformable Hydrogel Formed from Tetra‐arm Polymers
Author(s) -
Sakai Takamasa,
Akagi Yuki,
Matsunaga Takuro,
Kurakazu Manami,
Chung Ungil,
Shibayama Mitsuhiro
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
macromolecular rapid communications
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.348
H-Index - 154
eISSN - 1521-3927
pISSN - 1022-1336
DOI - 10.1002/marc.201000286
Subject(s) - tetra , polymer network , polymer , materials science , rubber elasticity , composite material , elasticity (physics) , coupling (piping) , network structure , polymer science , computer science , chemistry , machine learning , medicinal chemistry
After decades of efforts by many researchers, we have succeeded in realizing a near‐ideal polymer network. This network, the Tetra network, is made by cross‐end‐coupling of tetra‐arm polymer modules. The mechanical energy dissipation was extremely low (tan δ ≈ 10 −4 ). The macroscopic stress–strain relationship of the Tetra network was in good agreement with that of microscopic elastic blobs. The maximum breaking strength was extremely high (≥27 MPa). These results indicate that the Tetra network is closer to an ideal polymer network than any other conventional model networks. Because the Tetra network can be treated as uniformly packed elastic blobs, it should help apply the knowledge of single polymer chains seamlessly to the design of polymer materials and help further develop the theory of rubber elasticity.