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Updated: Aug 30, 2025

Investigating Single Molecule Adhesion by Atomic Force Spectroscopy
Published on: February 27, 2015
Interfacial Electrochemistry-Induced Detachable Adhesives with Ultra-High Bonding Strength and Detaching Efficiency
Min Wu1, Song Chen2, Yang Mei1
1School of Materials and Chemistry, Engineering Research Center of Biomass Materials, Ministry of Education, Southwest University of Science and Technology, Mianyang 621010, P. R. China.
Abstract:
Detachable adhesives with simultaneously high bonding strength and detaching efficiency have remained a great challenge in adhesion science. The existing detachable adhesives (e.g., solid-liquid phase transitions-based adhesives) usually show low initial cohesion and require long detaching time (several minutes or hours for transitions). Herein, by introducing ionic liquids (ILs) and soft polyethylene glycol (PEG) into a rigid epoxy precursor and curing, we demonstrated the adhesives with both high initial bonding strength (>13 MPa) and detaching efficiency (100% detachment within 10 s under a 90 V DC voltage). The high initial bonding strength is due to the imidazolium cations of ILs and their ion-dipole interactions with PEG can promote the curing of epoxy, decrease the glass-transition temperature, increase the interfacial wettability, and transmit external stress. Also, the outstanding detaching efficiency is because the tetrafluoroborate anions of ILs can electrochemically react rapidly under a voltage and generate fluorinated nanoparticles at the bonding interface within 1 minute. The high bonding and electrochemistry-induced detaching mechanism were further characterized. This work opens up a new avenue for the rational design of fast-detachable adhesives with high bonding strength, showing wide potential in many modern fields.
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