Hiroshima University, Graduate School of Engineering 

Polymer Technology Lab.

Nakai・Gotoh Lab.

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 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.

Research Topics

1) Flocculationn and compaction of suspended particles by utilizing hydrophilic-hydrophobic transition of thermosensitive polymer

2) Synthesis of porous thermosensitive gel by phase separation and control of porous structure

3) Development of novel dwatering methd for organic slurry by using the porous thermosensirive gel

4) Synthesis of thermosensitive gel particles using reactive surfactant

5) Synthesis of ZnO nano particles in polymer gel network

6) Synthesis ofthermosensitive gel by a plasma-initiated polymerization technique

7) Selective separation of heavy metals using molecular imprinting thermosensitive gel

8) Synthesis of gel capsule by utilizing the reaction of polymer and its application

9) Synthesis of monodispersed polymer gel particles by sedimentation polymerization method