Human beings use more than 6 billion pounds of glues and adhesive tapes every year. Widely applied in the automotive, aerospace, furniture, electronics, and construction industries, they are pervasive. Unfortunately, most of them are not degradable; many pile up in landfills, and some even release toxic gases into the atmosphere.
Adhesives have become indispensable in sealing tissues and dressing wounds after surgical procedures. Yet water makes up 60% of our bodies, and most synthetic adhesives cannot bind tightly to wet surfaces. Physicians must usually dry a wound before applying a bandage. To stick to any surface, those adhesives rely on a combination of ionic and van der Waals interactions with surface elements and on mechanical interlocking. Yet the large dielectric constant of water compromises the bonds made from those interactions; water molecules bind tightly to surfaces and prevent adhesives from displacing them.
To mitigate such problems and design better-performing adhesives,...
