Glue bonds to nonstick surfaces and wipes clean with ethanol

Posted by gmays 4 days ago

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Comments

Comment by murderfs 23 minutes ago

> “Since ethanol is the main component of hand sanitizer, we believe it is possible to de-bond and recycle the adhesive by using hand sanitizer as a substitute in certain real-world situations,” Aida says.

These sorts of environmental impact blurbs are hilarious. What kind of scenario are they envisioning where someone wants to remove and reuse a specialized adhesive bonding PTFE parts to something, but don't have ethanol on hand and have to fall back to using hand sanitizer?

Comment by loeg 4 minutes ago

Hand sanitizer is also contaminated with other crap... presumably that impacts the adhesive if you're attempting to "recycle" it? I agree, what a weird line.

Comment by oflannabhra 57 minutes ago

I guess one of my favorite old-school websites will need to get updated, ThisToThat [0].

[0] - https://www.thistothat.com

Comment by DannyBee 41 minutes ago

This website often suggests totally bad ideas, like brittle epoxies for bonds they shouldn't be used for.

The truth is nowadays you can just choose your favorite brand and they almost certainly have a correct, and good, adhesive selector.

For example, for loctite, you should just use: https://www.henkel-adhesives-selector.com/

Comment by oflannabhra 32 minutes ago

maybe, but where is the whimsy or delight in that?

Comment by bilsbie 3 minutes ago

Could this be used for hanging things from walls without damaging them?

Comment by ble 34 minutes ago

Interesting that it seems like the application method is to melt the glue:

> To test its adhesive strength, researchers first glued two untreated polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) plates by sandwiching molten CyclicFP-fmoc between them and letting it cool at room temperature for 10 min.

Also notable that the glue substance is reusable:

> Remarkably, a simple ethanol wash completely stripped CyclicFP-fmoc from the target PTFE plates, leaving no trace behind. The recovered adhesive proved repeatedly reusable, reliably maintaining its adhesive strength of ~1.2 ± 0.1 MPa across multiple cycles.

Perhaps hot glue guns are going to get an update ;)

Comment by bombela 2 minutes ago

For anybody not getting the reference, standard glue gun glue is obviously applied freshly melted and hot, and it is dissolved/debonded cleanly with isopropyl alcohol.

Comment by bertjk 15 minutes ago

At the risk of asking a really dumb question: Does this only work on PTFE or other flourine-compound surfaces?

Comment by coldbrewed 7 minutes ago

IANA chemist but my guess is that it's of particular interest because PTFE surfaces are especially non-stick, and non-PTFE surfaces have good options that require less exotic chemistry.

The question I have is how long will it be till the report comes out indicating that DuPont has been dumping this product and intermediate compounds into local waterways. I give it 15 years?

Comment by ssl-3 27 minutes ago

I'm very impressed that they were able to use glue on PTFE for...approximately anything at all. That's impressive.

But I'd like to take this opportunity to present my semi-annual rant about hot glue, instead.

It's amazing stuff. It's similar to many other liquid adhesives in that you can stick things together with it (probably not PTFE, but...), and they stay pretty well stuck.

But it's got this really neat property that most other things lack: When used with non-porous surfaces, it's removable. A few drops of isopropyl alcohol will eek in between the glue and the surface it is stuck to. It stays solid, but basically just falls right off with no apparent mess.

...which makes it absolutely fantastic for temporary fixturing.

Like: Glue an accelerometer to the middle of the 3D printer bed for resonance tuning using a very thin layer of hot glue, and then just use a bit of isopropyl to take it off later. It's like it never happened.

Comment by bluGill 13 minutes ago

There are many different hot glues, not all have that property.

Comment by oasisbob 44 minutes ago

Isn't high-ductility associated with creep, especially under static loads? That would seem to be a downside of an adhesive like this.

Comment by pavel_lishin 2 hours ago

My mind immediately jumped to The Mote In God's Eye.

Comment by squigz 44 minutes ago

In what context would one re-use a glue like this?

Comment by DannyBee 36 minutes ago

I have a weird use case, but this is actually wildly useful to me.

I use teflon (sometimes nylon, but mostly teflon) painter pyramids/holders/etc, because i spray finish stuff that is very good at adhering to lots of things, and are acetone based - VOC compliance pretty much forced acetone into solvent based stuff. This in turn pretty much makes finishes melt into anything except PE, nylon, teflon, even if they wouldn't otherwise.

To keep the pyramids and things where i want them, i have magnets glued into them. But because it's PFTE, the magnets don't really stay adhered well, even with (currently) specialized adhesives and i end up regluing them after every few times, often before the project finishes.

What i really want is an adhesive like this one, where i can glue the magnets in, but also remove them after the project finishes, because i'll go soak the pyramids in solvent or something to clean them, but don't want to damage any magnet coatings.

Comment by butvacuum 1 hour ago

Is there really a use for this(temporary adhesives) outside of Fixturing?

Comment by jesperwe 1 hour ago

The marine industry would love a (non water soluble) glue that achieves structural strength on PTFE and POM.

Comment by TeMPOraL 1 hour ago

Are you asking if there's use for temporarily sticking stuff to other stuff?

Yes, plenty. Especially if it sticks well while needed, and then can be non-destructively undone when no longer needed.

Comment by bluGill 1 hour ago

That is generally what fixturing implies. A temporary bond that you use while making a part, and then remove when the part is complete.

Comment by lotu 49 minutes ago

I think it could also be used outside of making a part. For example you want to setup sensor on a surface but it's important not to damage the surface, like the outside of a boat. This would be excellent for that.

Comment by baxuz 1 hour ago

This might be very useful for bonding PTFE and aluminium on cookware if it ends up being food safe.

Comment by dcrazy 1 hour ago

Any reason to think this flower of fluorines (seriously, that thing looks INTENSE) would be any more environmentally safe than PFOA?

Comment by yk 1 hour ago

On the left hand side we see a lot very unhappy carbon.

Comment by 1 hour ago