Since the dry film formed from positive photoresist is weak in film quality and lack in flexibility, there is a problem in making it a roll product. Therefore, focusing on the aldehyde component of the cresol-novolac resin, we found that introducing the alkyl chain of the freely linked chain using glutaraldehyde is good for adding flexibility. In this paper, the focus is shifted from aldehydes to phenolic components in order to achieve greater flexibility than that obtained by previous our work. Specifically, bisphenol A (BisA) and bisphenol C (BisC), which have bulky isopropylidene groups on the molecular chain skeleton, bisphenol P (BisP) and bisphenol M (BisM), which have two isopropylidene groups, bisphenol B (BisB), which has a methylpropylidene group having an alkyl side chain elongation effect in addition to bulkiness, and bisphenol E (BisE), which has an ethylidene group with slightly reduced bulkiness are mentioned as the phenolic components. The flexibility of the bisphenol-type novolac resin exceeded that of the cresol-type novolac resin. Especially the novolac resin composed of BisB or BisC exhibited high flexibility and high precision lithographic performance. It was concluded that these molecular structures require (i) introduction of a bulky isopropylidene unit, etc. into the molecular framework, (ii) expansion of the phenolic component interval by using glutaraldehyde, etc., which has a freely linked chain as a crosslinker, (iii) having a somewhat high molecular weight, and (iv) having a molecular structure that is easy to form hydrogen bonds.

Differences in the properties of cured polymers from 4,4'-diglycidyloxybiphenyl (DGBP) with mesogenic structure were investigated when bifunctional and polyfunctional curing agents were used. When bifunctional phenolic compound (DHDE) was used, the molecular chains were oriented to give a crystalline cured polymer with a melting point of 247.1°C. Due to crystallization, the cured polymer had a high density (1.314 g/cm³), improved elastic modulus and decreased thermal expansion. On the other hand, when polyfunctional phenol novolac (PN) was used as the curing agent, the orientation of the molecular chains was inhibited, resulting in an amorphous cured polymer. The cured polymer had a lower density of 1.244g/cm³ and a lower modulus of elasticity, while the fracture toughness was much higher than that of the conventional epoxy cured polymer.

In this study, macro-porous metallic material was prepared by template method using epoxy monolith, and was electrochemically characterized as a battery current collector. The metallic monolith had a thin metallic skeleton with thickness of 100-200 nm, and showed high porosity and large surface area. For its application as battery electrode, redoxactive NiCo₂O₄ nanowire array was hydrothermally deposited on the monolithic current collector, and the electrochemical performance was examined by cyclic voltammetry and constant current charge-discharge (CD) measurements comparing with a conventional metallic nickel foam current collector. These results indicate that the monolith electrode was superior in the specific capacitance and CD rate characteristics to the foam electrode.

Soda-AQ (Antraquinone) lignins derived from Japanese cedar (softwood) and Eucalyptus (hardwood) were used to investigate their application to novolak type phenolic resin. As a result of thermosetting reaction evaluation using acetone extract of soda-AQ lignin with hexamethylenetetramine (hexamine) as curing agent, it was confirmed that lignin of Japanese cedar gave better thermosetting reactivity than that of Eucalyptus. In addition, novolak type lignin-modified phenolic resin was synthesized using acetone extract of soda-AQ lignin, then it was confirmed that lignin of Japanese cedar was also superior to that of Eucalyptus in terms of compression molding material properties. Furthermore, novolak type ligninmodified phenolic resin was synthesized using crude soda-AQ lignin of Japanese cedar. Although falling short in terms of thermal decomposition resistance, the resin showed higher mechanical properties and higher heat resistance than those of petroleum-derived phenolic resin in transfer molding material properties.

Low thermal resistant insulating thin film primers based on self-ordered homeotropically oriented mesogenic epoxy resins were investigated using X-ray diffraction analysis. Two types of primers were compared, one is a crystalline monomer type (ME) and another is an oligomer type (MEP), which is a lower melting point version of ME. Both primers showed strong periodic structures (monodomain structures) and random higher-order structures (polydomain structures) on glass slide, aluminum and copper substrates. The orientation slope of the molecules on the substrates was two times larger for ME than for MEP, indicating a stronger vertical orientation. The thermal conductivity in the direction of thickness of the ME primer, prepared on a copper foil with a thickness of approximately 1.6 µm, was 3.7 W･m^－1･K^－1, approximately 18 times that of a conventional epoxy resin, while the MEP primer showed 0.3 W･m^－1･K^－1, about 1.5 times that of a conventional epoxy resin. The volume resistivity of both primers was >10¹⁸ Ω･m, indicating that they, particularly ME primer, have sufficient electrical insulation performance and are effective as insulating thin films that can contribute to improving the heat transfer efficiency between different materials.