Scale-Spanning Strong Adhesion Using Cellulose-Based Microgels

Adhesive gels derived from biobased sustainable materials have extremely broad application prospects, such as in flexible smart materials and biomedicine fields. Combining high toughness and strong, persisting repeatable adhesion has always been a daunting challenge for adhesive gels. However, bulk gels based on polysaccharides as the most abundant bio-based compounds usually possess a high toughness but weak interfacial adhesion due to the strong hydration potential. Herein, a novel kind of highly tough microgel membranes with rough surfaces is fabricated using loosely chemically cross-linked dihydroxypropyl cellulose (cDHPC) microgels (average size = 1.25 ± 0.03 µm). Such microgel membranes exhibit strong, instant, and persisting adhesion to various substrates with different surface roughness. Slight chemical cross-linking and multiple physical interactions within microgels and resulting microgel membranes lead to high tensile strength and toughness of 0.23 ± 0.03 MPa and 73.8 ± 9.3 KJ m^-3 , respectively. The maximum adhesive strength and debonding work exceed 320 ± 0.50 KPa and 160.97 ± 0.20 J m^-2 , respectively. After five cycles (re-lap after detaching), the adhesive strength still remains above 200 KPa. Their adhesive properties outperform most bio-based adhesive gels and even petroleum-based gels, which are based on synergistic molecular and microscaled topological interactions.