If the hydrogel is stretched in the ẑ-direction (i.e., λ > 0), the amount of condensed counterions around the chains aligned in the ẑ-direction increases more than 2-fold at λ ≈ 0.2 (see black triangles in Figure ). If the stretching is further increased towards λ = 0.5, the condensation in the ẑ direction decreases gradually from its maximum value and becomes slightly lower than the values at λ = 0 (see Figures ). In the lateral (i.e., x and ŷ) directions, the condensation levels also increase roughly 50% in each direction at the maximum stretching (see circles and squares in Figure ). The increase in the condensation levels in the lateral directions is weaker and monotonic compared to the condensation profile in the ẑ direction. Note that as the hydrogel is stretched in the ẑ-direction, the chains in the x and ŷ directions are slightly collapsed to preserve the total volume of the hydrogel. As a result, even at the maximum stretching (i.e., λ = 0.5), the gel volume increases only 2% (see Supporting Information Figure ).