Japanese
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.
The
thermosensitive gel is expected to use for the application to the
adsorbent, the drug delivery system (DDS) and the like. In those cases
the gels are used in the shape of the dispersed particulate with a
small diameter. However, when the gel particles are heated above
transition temperature, they aggregate by hydrophobic interaction.
We investigate the emulsification
polymerization method, which uses the ionic reactive surfactant to
synthesize the thermosensitive polymer gel particles of the submicron
order, which is dispersed with stability even above transition
temperature.
We investigate the emulsification polymerization method, which uses the ionic reactive surfactant to synthesize the thermosensitive polymer gel particles of the submicron order, which is dispersed with stability even above transition temperature.
