Interfacial Interactions of Bioinspired Underwater Adhesives*

The increasing demand for adhesives that stick to wet tissues is addressed by mimicking the adhesive mechanisms displayed by mussel foot proteins (Mfp). The versatile cohesive and adhesive molecular interactions offered by the pendant variable groups in Mfp is proposed to be the reason for robust underwater adhesion of Mfp. Though appending the Mfp-inspired functional groups to various polymer backbones is a popular strategy to obtain synthetic underwater adhesives, the quantitative aspects of the relationship between polymer structure and interfacial adhesion have gone largely uncorroborated. The main reasons for this obscure corroboration are the scarcities in bioinspired adhesive designs that do not change cohesive parameters upon altering pendant structure and experimental techniques that visualize interactions at the buried contact interfaces. The presentation will introduce the need for underwater adhesives and our synthetic strategies to overcome the challenges in underwater adhesion. Later, the relationship between polymer structure and interfacial adhesion identified using a combination of pull-off force measurements and sum-frequency generation spectroscopy will be revealed.