Hiroshima University, Graduate School of Engineering 

Polymer Technology Lab.

Nakai・Gotoh Lab.

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  A polymer gel is a cross-linked three dimentional polymer networks that contains liquids in its internal space. It is a soft matter intermediate between a solid and a liquid. The gel shows discontinuous volume change when a external stimuli such as temperature, light and electric field, is imposed upon it. It is called a stimuli responsiveness.

  The polymer gel  swells or shrinks when external condition such as  ion strength or solvent composition is changed. It is called a phase transition. The phase transition in gels caused by four fundamental interactions, i.e. hydrogen bonding, hydrophobic interaction, van der Waals interaction and ionic interaction between ionized groups.

  There are many potential applications of the polymer gels  such as the separation of solutes or metal ions, immobilization of enzymes and drug delivery system. New application also has been developed, in which gel networks are used as a reaction, separation and/or chemo-mechanical energy transformation media, for example, adsorbents, membranes, chromatography and preparation of fine particles in the gel networks.

    High molecular weight polymeric flocculants have been widely used in the flocculation of suspended particles and sludge dewatering. The mechanism of the flocculation of suspended particles using polymeric flocculans is explained by the bridging through the polymer molecules.
    The flocs formed with polymeric flocculants are usually bulky and contain a large amount of water, and it is difficult to remove such water effectively by the mechanical method.
    To solve this problem, we proposed a novel method using thermosensitive polymer. This method can modify the particle surface from hydrophilic to hydrophobic.