Department of Chemistry, Purdue University , 560 Oval Drive, West Lafayette, Indiana 47907-2084, United States.
School of Materials Engineering, Purdue University , 701 West Stadium Avenue, West Lafayette, Indiana 47907-2045, United States.
ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2017 Mar 1;9(8):7866-7872. doi: 10.1021/acsami.7b00270. Epub 2017 Feb 20.
When it comes to underwater adhesion, shellfish are the true experts. Mussels, barnacles, and oysters attach to rocks with apparent ease. Yet our man-made glues often fail when trying to stick in wet environments. Results described herein focus on a copolymer mimic of mussel adhesive proteins, poly(catechol-styrene). Underwater bonding was examined as a function of parameters including polymer molecular weight and composition. In doing so, several surprising results emerged. Poly(catechol-styrene) may be the strongest underwater adhesive found to date. Bonding even exceeded that of the reference biological system, live mussels. Adhesion was also found to be stronger under salt water than deionized water. Such unexpected findings may contradict an earlier proposal in which charged amino acids were suggested to be key for mussel adhesive function. Taken together, these discoveries are helping us to both understand biological adhesion as well as develop new materials with properties not accessed previously.
当涉及水下附着力时，贝类是真正的专家。贻贝、藤壶和牡蛎显然很容易附着在岩石上。然而，我们的人造胶水在尝试在潮湿环境中粘住时往往会失效。本文介绍的结果主要集中在贻贝黏附蛋白的共聚模拟物聚（儿茶酚-苯乙烯）上。作为研究的一部分，对聚合物分子量和组成等参数对水下键合的影响进行了研究。结果表明，聚（儿茶酚-苯乙烯）可能是迄今为止发现的最强水下粘合剂。其键合强度甚至超过了参考生物系统——活贻贝。研究还发现，盐水环境中的键合强度高于去离子水。这些意想不到的发现可能与之前提出的一个观点相矛盾，该观点认为带电荷的氨基酸是贻贝黏附功能的关键。总的来说，这些发现帮助我们理解生物黏附，同时开发出以前无法获得的具有特殊性能的新材料。
