SUPER TOUGH GELS WITH A DOUBLE NETWORK STRUCTURE.pdfVIP

Chinese Journal of Polymer Science Vol. 27, No. 1, (2009), 1?9 Chinese Journal of Polymer Science ?2009 World Scientific Feature Article SUPER TOUGH GELS WITH A DOUBLE NETWORK STRUCTURE* Tasuku Nakajima, Takayuki Kurokawa, Hidemitsu Furukawa, Qiu Ming Yu, Yoshimi Tanaka, Yoshihito Osada1 and Jian Ping Gong** Department of Biological Sciences, Graduate School of Science, Hokkaido University, Sapporo 060-0810, Japan Abstract 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. Keywords: Hydrogel; Toughness; Fracture; Necking phenomenon. INTRODUCTION Biological tissues mainly consist of water and macromolecular components such as fibrous collagen and proteoglycans. Biological tissues display fascinating properties: extremely low surface sliding friction between cartilages, strong adhesion between hard bones and tendons, extraordinarily strong mechanical toughness and shock-absorbance of cartilages, tendons, muscles, etc.[1, 2]. From the view point of material science, bio-tissues, having an elastic modulus of 104?107 Pa and containing 50%?85% of water, are essentially soft wet materials. Some of these excellent properties of bio-tissues