Understanding of hydrogel network formation and its application in the architecture of significantly enhanced hydrogel

An understanding of the physical hydrogel network formation has been obtained by dynamic rheological experiments. The evidence shows that the network formation turns out to be a nucleation-controlled process. It was found that there exists a critical temperature T-c; fiber branching is greatly enhanced when the network formation is performed in the regime of T < T-c (T, the final setting temperature). This finding enables the authors to build significantly enhanced gel networks. So far G(') (elastic modulus) of the hydrogel network has been enhanced by 187% while the formation period can be greatly shortened to only 1/20 of the previous process. (c) 2006 American Institute of Physics.