A Tough Hydrogel Adhesive for the Repair of Archeological Pottery

Pottery is the oldest art and plays a landmark role in human civilization. The repair of ceramic relics often uses acrylic resins and cyanoacrylate adhesives. However, existing adhesives often take hours to get cured, and wet adhesion is not possible. We herein propose a redox initiator-triggered hydrogel adhesive, of which robust (∼700 J m^-2) and wet adhesion with potsherds can be achieved within a few seconds. The high toughness lies in the self-limited delocalized rupture of the porous interface, and the wet adhesion is due to the hydrophilic precursor and its free radical polymerization. The hydrogel adhesive also exhibits high aging resistance for stable preservation of ∼400 annuals. We have applied the adhesive to the restoration of artifacts excavated from Yinxu, Anyang (∼1300 BC) and the Xia Jiao Shan site (∼4000 BC, Neolithic), and the adhesive is expected to be extended to applications beyond archeology.