Research Outline

Rubbery materials, that are soft and stretchable, are commonplace in our daily life, but surprisingly, their detailed structures were unknown in today’s science.
The reason is the invisibility of thin polymer chains that make up the rubbery materials even in microscope.
We overcome this problem by developing two new technologies, “double network tecnique” and “mineral staining”, enabling the world’s first nanoscale structure observation of hydrogel, which is one of the rubbery material.
Currently, by applying this structural observation method, we aim to elucidate several unknown problems in polymer science, such as fracture, friction, etc.