8 ms·
Glue bonds to nonstick surfaces and wipes clean with ethanol
- baxuz 3mo agoThis might be very useful for bonding PTFE and aluminium on cookware if it ends up being food safe.
- dcrazy 3mo agoAny reason to think this flower of fluorines (seriously, that thing looks INTENSE) would be any more environmentally safe than PFOA?
- forgetfreeman 3mo agoI'd be interested to see the Things I Won't Work With author's take on the synthesis given his usual reaction to fluorine chemistry
- nick__m 3mo agoI made the same error as you, before realizing that in this molecule the fluorine is bounded to a carbon not an oxygen. Fluorine once bounded to a carbon won't move from there unless it receive a lot's of energy. A fluorine bounded to an oxygen really wants to be elsewhere and it's ready to pay a lot's of energy to make it happen! So the scary looking part of that chemical is incredibly stable and this is what make this substance potentially dangerous.
- forgetfreeman 3mo agoI'm mostly curious about how they managed to get all of the scary looking parts crammed onto that one end and how hairy that process was.
- GuB-42 3mo agoIf you don't cook with ethanol that is...
- pumnikol 3mo agoI really don't know about food safe. Or safe for any end consumer, really. They absolutely need to do some severe toxicity testing. Because this funny new glue is an organic phosphate which in itself already raises some serious questions. On top of that, the ring also contains two perfluoropinacol moieties which could be released e.g. on heating or through interaction with acids or something else. This is a highly volatile molecule and "fatal in contact with skin," i.e. of the highest toxicity class. That ain't no good.
- pavel_lishin 3mo agoMy mind immediately jumped to The Mote In God's Eye.
- yk 3mo agoOn the left hand side we see a lot very unhappy carbon.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- butvacuum 3mo agoIs there really a use for this(temporary adhesives) outside of Fixturing?
- TeMPOraL 3mo agoAre 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.
- bluGill 3mo agoThat is generally what fixturing implies. A temporary bond that you use while making a part, and then remove when the part is complete.
- lotu 3mo agoI 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.
- jesperwe 3mo agoThe marine industry would love a (non water soluble) glue that achieves structural strength on PTFE and POM.
- oflannabhra 3mo agoI guess one of my favorite old-school websites will need to get updated, ThisToThat [0]. [0] - https://www.thistothat.com https://www.thistothat.com
- DannyBee 3mo agoThis 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/ https://www.henkel-adhesives-selector.com/
- oflannabhra 3mo agomaybe, but where is the whimsy or delight in that?
- BenjiWiebe 3mo agoNot a lot of whimsy and delight in having your glue joint fail because the delightful & whimsical website gave bad advice.
- SV_BubbleTime 3mo agoDude, people in 2026 still think duct tape is a “great product”. It’s pretty clear people have no fucking clue what makes a good adhesive. I’ll settle for just not seeing duct tape in the 10,000 places it doesn’t belong!!
- markdown 3mo agoHey what do you use in place of duct tape?
- conorcleary 3mo ago
- oasisbob 3mo agoIsn't high-ductility associated with creep, especially under static loads? That would seem to be a downside of an adhesive like this.
- squigz 3mo agoIn what context would one re-use a glue like this?
- DannyBee 3mo agoI 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.
- bombela 3mo agoI would 3D print (FDM) standoffs in PE with integrated pockets to insert magnets. You can even insert the magnets during the print if you fancy. Though my preference goes to a slide in pocket. PE sticks to itself and not much else. Packing tape is PE and adhesive. Apply PE tape to the printer bed before printing.
- DannyBee 3mo agoYeah I have been playing with 3d printing nylon and pps versions because pure pe filament are harder to find. They also often have really really poor layer adhesion and crazy levels of warping. PPS is not that expensive if you know some of the more specialized filament vendors. Anyway like I said my use case is weird and may even be transient. I can think of other use cases, but most are coatings related (Ie using Teflon as a removable masking material, etc). The removability is actually much less interesting than the ability to strongly bond Teflon.
- ble 3mo agoInteresting 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 ;)
- ssl-3 3mo agoI'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 (edit: from a hot glue gun), 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.
- bluGill 3mo agoThere are many different hot glues, not all have that property.
- ssl-3 3mo agoTIL. Which ones have this property, and which ones do not? How do we tell them apart? How do I identify the cheap hot glue that came with the cheap hot glue gun that I bought at Dollar General on a Saturday afternoon in 2021? It does this business just fine.
- murderfs 3mo 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?
- loeg 3mo agoHand 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.
- bluGill 3mo agoAssuming it is even ethanol based in the first place, not all. (more than one alcoholic has ended up in the ER thinking all of them are)
- gizmo686 3mo agoWho says this will be a specialized adhesive? If it works as advertised, it could be a super-glue alternative with easy unglueability. That would be an attractive consumer product; and the type of product that could easily end up on someones hands.
- danbruc 3mo agoSuperglue is probably two order of magnitude stronger, so I doubt that this will replace cyanoacrylates. And while ethanol or hand sanitizer will not help much with superglue, acetone or nail polish remover will remove it. Then again, acetone will attack more materials then ethanol, so a glue that can be removed with ethanol might still be beneficial.
- SV_BubbleTime 3mo ago
- bertjk 3mo agoAt the risk of asking a really dumb question: Does this only work on PTFE or other flourine-compound surfaces?
- coldbrewed 3mo agoIANA 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?
- tengbretson 3mo agoI really want to see this tested on HDPE. A simple, reliable adhesive for polyethylene could be a game changer.
- bilsbie 3mo agoCould this be used for hanging things from walls without damaging them?
- mint5 3mo agoYay more sources of weird forever chemicals. And while it’s been a long time since I had ochem, there’s quite a few places this molecule looks like it can break apart. They should show results from oxidation, thermal stability, accelerated aging tests. And I’m beyond skeptical anyone would carefully recover this gunk each even once for re-use outside some contrived lab demo.
- teddyh 3mo agos/^/This /
- eszed 3mo ago> it is imperative to study this molecule’s environmental fate and impact before pressing it into service. Yes, let's do that, this time. Sounds like a super-cool and useful molecule, but externalities can be killer.
- freediddy 3mo agoI'm thankful they are researching the environmental impact of this. The last thing we need is another PFAS debacle decades later.
- trollbridge 3mo agoNo kidding. Fluoro-anything needs to be checked out for impact on the ozone layer, problems that happens when it burns, and problems that happens when it flakes off and gets ingested by people.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- audreysweeney 3mo ago[dead]
- culi 3mo agoThere's an endless stream of non-stick pans in Goodwills. I feel bad for the people that don't know better and buy used non-stick pans and I also feed bad about the sheer amount of waste being generated. It would be incredible if this could be used to get rid of scratched up or otherwise unsafe non-stick coatings to the point that the pan is still food safe
- pastage 3mo agodelete EDIT 2: I think they are non-toxic and inert. But I tried to find my source for this and I am failing badly. so deleting this comment EDIT: I agree they are very waste full since they do not live that long. I have owned three non-stick pans, my cast iron pans have outlived all of them by decades.
- culi 3mo agoNon-stick pans are fine if they are never heated above 500°F (260°C) and never scratched. In general, you probably shouldn't regularly use a nonstick pan for longer than 2 years. If it is scratched or heated above what it says on the label, then yes it is absolutely toxic.
- galangalalgol 3mo agoWhy is scratched a problem? They use the same stuff in medical implants. It is chemically inert if you don't overheat it right?
- ssl-3 3mo agoPTFE is very inert, but that doesn't mean that I want to eat more of it than I have to. And as a practical matter: Once it begins flaking off, more tends to follow. I don't know if that's because of oxidation of the aluminum, or what, but it sure seems to behave that way. I mean, I'm not too awful worried about it compared to my adventures in 3D printing (with its crusty PTFE Bowden tubes). But I very deliberately have just exactly one Teflon-coated pan in my house, and it only gets used for exactly one purpose: Making scrambled eggs with a rubber spatula. (I like my eggs scrambled sometimes, and I'm not pro-enough to make it work with cast iron or stainless cookware.)
- jyounker 3mo agoThat is a deeply scary looking compound.
- analog31 3mo agoAmong cyanoacrylates, Permabond 105 does a pretty good job bonding teflon, if you use their primer.
- nosmokewhereiam 3mo agoI thought of the seal defeat of using acetone on envelopes...to solve the challenge ofc from Defcon
- DivingForGold 3mo agoBudding armchair polymer chemists: The article specifically states this adhesive works by way of flourine-flourine bonds (found in PFAS and flourocarbon materials). It does not indicate that it can bond other very low or low polarity polymers, the most common being polypropylene and polyethylene, which there is no known adhesive that will bond strongly to those two polymers, arguably these 2 are much more common than flourocarbons. The cyanoacrylate "claimed" solutions for polypropylene and polyethylene are very weak.
- Melatonic 3mo agoI saw this and was immediately excited for use with UHMWPE. Too bad it doesn't work on polyethylenes
- tape_measure 3mo agoIt's like soap for fluorine compounds.