Cho, Hyesung Wu, Gaoxiang Jolly, Jason Christopher Fortoul, Nicole He, Zhenping Gao, Yuchong Jagota, Anand Yang, Shu 2024-01-19T19:34:45Z 2024-01-19T19:34:45Z 2021-09-02 2019-07 0027-8424 https://pubs.kist.re.kr/handle/201004/119859 Adhesives are ubiquitous in daily life and industrial applications. They usually fall into one of two classes: strong but irreversible (e.g., superglues) or reversible/reusable but weak (e.g., pressure-sensitive adhesives and biological and biomimetic surfaces). Achieving both superstrong adhesion and reversibility has been challenging. This task is particularly difficult for hydrogels that, because their major constituent is liquid water, typically do not adhere strongly to any material. Here, we report a snail epiphragm-inspired adhesion mechanism where a polymer gel system demonstrates superglue-like adhesion strength (up to 892 N.cm(-2)) that is also reversible. It is applicable to both flat and rough target surfaces. In its hydrated state, the softened gel conformally adapts to the target surface by low-energy deformation, which is locked upon drying as the elastic modulus is raised from hundreds of kilopascals to similar to 2.3 GPa, analogous to the action of the epiphragm of snails. We show that in this system adhesion strength is based on the material's intrinsic, especially near-surface, properties and not on any near-surface structure, providing reversibility and ease of scaling up for practical applications. English National Academy of Sciences Intrinsically reversible superglues via shape adaptation inspired by snail epiphragm Article 10.1073/pnas.1818534116 1 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, v.116, no.28, pp.13774 - 13779 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 116 28 13774 13779 N scie scopus 000474535700018 2-s2.0-85068564012 Multidisciplinary Sciences Science & Technology - Other Topics Article DRY ADHESIVES ENHANCED ADHESION HYDROGELS SURFACES ARRAYS polymer gels superstrong adhesion shape adaptation intrinsically reversible snail epiphragm