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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 January 2012
High performance polymer network gels consisting of tetra-armpoly(ethyleneglycol) (Tetra-PEG) gels were fabricated via a moduleassembling method and their mechanical properties and structure wereinvestigated by stretching and compression measurements, dynamic mechanicalmeasurements, and small-angle neutron scattering (SANS). It was found thatTetra-PEG gels are nearly-ideal polymer network with negligible fractions ofdefects and entanglements. SANS intensity functions indicated that thenetwork structure was uniform free from spatial inhomogeneities. It isdeduced that this uniform structure is ascribed to its unique preparationmethod, i.e., module assembling method (cross-end-coupling oftetra-functional macromers with complementary functional groups).Characteristic properties originated from the near-ideality as polymernetworks are demonstrated, including its application to ion gels, i.e.,polymer network in ionic liquid.