Abstract
Living organs perform incredibly well in soft and wet gel-like states, containing 50-80% of water. Thus, hydrogels attract much attention as excellent wet materials, as they are suitable for manufacturing artificial organs for medical treatments. The conventional hydrogels, however, are too brittle to be used for such applications. Recently, various high-strength gels have been developed in Japan, which sometimes contain over 90% water and exhibit large fracture strength, which is comparable to that of natural cartilage (3・18 MPa). This paper reports the latest researches on high-strength soft and wet materials with Scanning Microscopic Light Scattering (SMILS), which was developed for the minute characterization of network structure in gels.
