学生の伊藤 麻絵さん（博士後期課程2年、物質化学領域・山口(政)研究室）が、1月26日～1月28日に開催されたICSMA2018においてBest Presentation Awardを受賞しました。

　2018 International Conference on Smart Materials Applications (ICSMA 2018) will take place in Singapore during January 26-28, 2018. The conference program covered invited, oral, and poster presentations from scientists working in similar areas to establish platforms for collaborative research projects in this field. This conference will bring together leaders from industry and academia to exchange and share their experiences, present research results, explore collaborations and to spark new ideas, with the aim of developing new projects and exploiting new technology in this field.

■タイトル
　Control of segmental motion of poly(methyl methacrylate) by addition of metal salts

■著者
　Asae Ito, Naoya Tsugawa and Masayuki Yamaguchi

■論文概要
　Glass transition temperature (Tg) of a polymer is one of important factors for polymer processing and expansion of application of polymers. In these days, various attempts have been reported as a way to enhance Tg. Tg is known to be determined by chemical structure greatly. Therefore, a novel polymeric material with high Tg is proposed. However, it is not easy to be available in industry. Under this situation, our group has been focused on design of new functional polymers by introducing pseudo-crosslinking points with an addition of metal salts to a glassy polymer and elucidate the key to Tg enhancement. This method would be more convenient to enhance Tg. Up to now, we found that Tg of poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA), which is one of the most useful polymer, especially as optical materials, was considerably enhanced by addition of specific lithium salts, such as LiCF3SO3 and LiBr. In this conference, I will give a presentation on the Tg enhancement by addition of the lithium salts and the mechanism of this phenomenon.

■受賞に当たって一言
　「2018 International Conference on Smart Materials Applications(ICSMA2018)」は非常に幅広い分野からの参加者で構成されているため、異分野の方にも自分の研究内容を面白いと感じてもらえるように、自分なりに考えて発表準備を行いました。その結果、Best Presentation Awardをいただくことができ、大変光栄に存じます。指導教員の山口政之教授をはじめ多くの方々のご指導に感謝するとともに、審査員の先生方に深く感謝いたします。

平成30年1月31日