A furan-containing biomimetic multiphase structure for strong and supertough sustainable adhesives

Development of sustainable adhesives requires simultaneous realiza-tion of high strength and excellent ductility but remains challenging. Here, we prepare furan-ring-containing biomimetic multiphase poly-mers to afford fully sustainable, strong, and supertough adhesives, showing that the key factors of these adhesives are the asymmetric structure of the aromatic furan ring and its oxygenated nature. The adhesives exhibit several beneficial structural features: easy phase sep-aration, dynamic hard phases capable of rupturing and re-forming to dissipate energy, strain-induced orientation and recrystallization, and multiple oxygen binding to substrates. All of these factors act in synergy to result in high adhesion strength (12.1 MPa), exceptional toughness (work of debonding >13,000 N m-1), excellent temperature adaptability, and impressive solvent resistance. Thus, the present work provides new perspectives on the design of strong, tough, and fully sustainable adhesives.

Automated summary

The development of sustainable adhesives with high strength and excellent ductility is challenging. This study successfully prepared furan-ring-containing biomimetic multiphase polymers to achieve fully sustainable, strong, and supertough adhesives. The key factors of these adhesives are the asymmetric structure and oxygenated nature of the aromatic furan ring. The adhesives demonstrate beneficial features such as easy phase separation, dynamic hard phases, strain-induced orientation and recrystallization, and multiple oxygen binding to substrates, resulting in high adhesion strength, exceptional toughness, temperature adaptability, and solvent resistance.