Structure-mechanical property relationship of tough hydrogels

Recent developments of tough hydrogels have changed the concept of hydrogels. These gels have an extraordinarily high modulus, high tenacity, and high deformability. In this review, it is demonstrated that structural analyses with small-angle neutron scattering (SANS) have elucidated the origin of the toughness and the mechanisms of deformation of tough hydrogels. Particularly, we focus on Tetra-PEG gels because of their simple and uniform architecture, i.e., unimodal network free from trapped entanglements and with negligible network defects, and investigate the structure-mechanical property relationship.