Abstract
Gels have superior features such as high water content, materials permeability, extremely low friction, and biocompatibility, which are not found in the hard and dry materials, because these features are due to their soft and wet features. Now artificial gels have become similar to natural gels of the human body: the articular cartilage of our knee has both several MPa of mechanical strength and about 0.01 of surface frictional coefficient. Above all, We paid attention to high functionality of the shape-memory gels (SMG). In this study, we aim to develop an original apparatus for evaluating surface mechanical properties of gels such as surface friction of the high functionality gels.
