> “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?
I can think of a few things that relate, as someone who is more in the business of taking random things apart for repair than building them new:
In the mysterious future, I might have a widget that needs to be disassembled which uses this glue.
And I'm at the shop right now; as I look around the bench, I don't see any industrial products that are primarily ethanol. It's just not something we typically have a use for.
But there is a giant pump-bottle of hand sanitizer that is still right there by the doorway as a holdover from the COVID days. So if this adhesive ever begins to show up in products, and if hand sanitizer is Good Enough, then I'll be using that.
It saves a trip to the hardware store for gallon-sized can of "denatured alcohol" (which is typically very heavy with methanol at an unspecified ratio), and it avoids questions about buying/having a bottle of Everclear from the liquor store.
I think it's worthwhile to mention the possibility of using hand sanitizer for this purpose.
Who 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.
Superglue 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.
Never heard that name, but according to their safety data sheet [1] it is 95+ % dimethylformamide [2]. Not too different from acetone, with a additional dimethylamin group. Acetone-free nail polish remover usually contains primarily ethyl acetate [3] which is also structurally similar.
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.
One example might be ungluing a lithium pouch cell (usually polyamide film outer surface, which is a pretty low-surface-energy polymer) for home replacement. Electrically-debonded adhesives are a better option here, but not sure what the cost trade-offs look like.
There'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
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.
It's worth noting that all "forever chemicals" have major health concerns. PFAS, as a class, is the one most studied. They have been explicitly banned in many countries (e.g. France and Sweden) and even some US states (Maine, Minnesota, etc).
But it's a bit like how the DEA has to update their list of banned substances multiple times a month because people keep coming up with new designer drugs and "research chemicals" that aren't technically banned.
I think a broader umbrella term might be POPs (Persistent Organic Pollutants) though that might also be too broad to be useful. A lot of times it's their non-stick properties themselves that make them so toxic, especially to fish and smaller organisms.
Non-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.
PTFE 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.)
Yay 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.
No 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.
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 ;)
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.
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 (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.
I have an electric guitar which has an uncovered electronic cavity in the back, where the volume pot is mounted, and all wiring passing through it. I have a DPDT sliding switch there which is just held by hot glue to the side of the cavity, and recessed in a bit so that it isn't accidentally moved. It's been that way for years. From time to time it used to come off spontaneously, requiring a re-gluing, but I learned to do it better.
When redoing the wiring for one reason or another, it's trivially easy to peel the switch off with a screwdriver and remove the glue.
There isn't a compellingly better way of attaching that switch there. It has mounting screw holes but they point in the wrong direction, into the cavity. To screw it down, I would need some sort of long risers that somehow attach to the bottom of the cavity and are firm enough to resist the side to side push. Little L-brackets could work that attach to the side of the cavity. It's a very small cavity: hard to screw such brackets in, but that can be solved. Even if the brackets themselves were permanently mounted, not having to be removed when the switch is taken out, it would still take more time than with the glue.
Another use I have for glue is to secure a household internet connection. It's just a thin wire coming out of a RJ jack in the wall, in a room where kids play. The installer didn't crimp the plug into the cable insulation. The situation is that the insulation ends a few millimeters before the RJ plug, leaving a couple of bare wires that seem like 22 AWG crimped in.
I "kid-proofed" this with hot glue. Hot glue is all over that plug, and about two feet of the cable is basically encased in hot glue, attached to the switch plate and along the wall right until the point it goes behind some furniture. I check on it from time to time to repair any tearing away.
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.
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?
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.
I 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.
Yeah 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.
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.
> “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?
I can think of a few things that relate, as someone who is more in the business of taking random things apart for repair than building them new:
In the mysterious future, I might have a widget that needs to be disassembled which uses this glue.
And I'm at the shop right now; as I look around the bench, I don't see any industrial products that are primarily ethanol. It's just not something we typically have a use for.
But there is a giant pump-bottle of hand sanitizer that is still right there by the doorway as a holdover from the COVID days. So if this adhesive ever begins to show up in products, and if hand sanitizer is Good Enough, then I'll be using that.
It saves a trip to the hardware store for gallon-sized can of "denatured alcohol" (which is typically very heavy with methanol at an unspecified ratio), and it avoids questions about buying/having a bottle of Everclear from the liquor store.
I think it's worthwhile to mention the possibility of using hand sanitizer for this purpose.
Who 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.
Superglue 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.
Also… Uncure is a popular brand of cyanoacrylate remover. This is already a solved problem it seems.
Never heard that name, but according to their safety data sheet [1] it is 95+ % dimethylformamide [2]. Not too different from acetone, with a additional dimethylamin group. Acetone-free nail polish remover usually contains primarily ethyl acetate [3] which is also structurally similar.
[1] https://bsi-inc.com/sds_pdf/sds_un_cure.pdf
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimethylformamide
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethyl_acetate
3M will fight for this patent
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.
Assuming 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)
One example might be ungluing a lithium pouch cell (usually polyamide film outer surface, which is a pretty low-surface-energy polymer) for home replacement. Electrically-debonded adhesives are a better option here, but not sure what the cost trade-offs look like.
Gelled solvents are useful for softening adhesives in certain situations far better than the pure substance
Maybe a 2026 remake of MacGyver?
Stick on nails
There'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
delete
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.
PFAS (which is what makes nonstick nonstick) have tentative links to several cancers [1]
[1] https://dceg.cancer.gov/research/what-we-study/pfas
It's worth noting that all "forever chemicals" have major health concerns. PFAS, as a class, is the one most studied. They have been explicitly banned in many countries (e.g. France and Sweden) and even some US states (Maine, Minnesota, etc).
But it's a bit like how the DEA has to update their list of banned substances multiple times a month because people keep coming up with new designer drugs and "research chemicals" that aren't technically banned.
I think a broader umbrella term might be POPs (Persistent Organic Pollutants) though that might also be too broad to be useful. A lot of times it's their non-stick properties themselves that make them so toxic, especially to fish and smaller organisms.
PTFE is perfectly safe as long as you don’t get it too hot. So, not the best material for non-stick pans.
The thread tape on all non-compression screw-type plumbing fittings is made of PTFE, and so is Gore-Tex.
I’m well aware of the danger of PFAS, my local watershed is contaminated with it from a 3M plant.
You can use pipe dope instead of PTFE if you want. It's just more expensive.
Non-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.
Why is scratched a problem? They use the same stuff in medical implants. It is chemically inert if you don't overheat it right?
PTFE 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.)
... or just avoid the risk entirely.
That is a deeply scary looking compound.
I guess one of my favorite old-school websites will need to get updated, ThisToThat [0].
[0] - https://www.thistothat.com
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/
maybe, but where is the whimsy or delight in that?
Not a lot of whimsy and delight in having your glue joint fail because the delightful & whimsical website gave bad advice.
Dude, 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!!
Yay 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.
I'm thankful they are researching the environmental impact of this. The last thing we need is another PFAS debacle decades later.
No 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.
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 ;)
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.
But does not stick to "nonstick" surfaces, which the researchers claim this does.
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 (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.
I have an electric guitar which has an uncovered electronic cavity in the back, where the volume pot is mounted, and all wiring passing through it. I have a DPDT sliding switch there which is just held by hot glue to the side of the cavity, and recessed in a bit so that it isn't accidentally moved. It's been that way for years. From time to time it used to come off spontaneously, requiring a re-gluing, but I learned to do it better.
When redoing the wiring for one reason or another, it's trivially easy to peel the switch off with a screwdriver and remove the glue.
There isn't a compellingly better way of attaching that switch there. It has mounting screw holes but they point in the wrong direction, into the cavity. To screw it down, I would need some sort of long risers that somehow attach to the bottom of the cavity and are firm enough to resist the side to side push. Little L-brackets could work that attach to the side of the cavity. It's a very small cavity: hard to screw such brackets in, but that can be solved. Even if the brackets themselves were permanently mounted, not having to be removed when the switch is taken out, it would still take more time than with the glue.
Another use I have for glue is to secure a household internet connection. It's just a thin wire coming out of a RJ jack in the wall, in a room where kids play. The installer didn't crimp the plug into the cable insulation. The situation is that the insulation ends a few millimeters before the RJ plug, leaving a couple of bare wires that seem like 22 AWG crimped in. I "kid-proofed" this with hot glue. Hot glue is all over that plug, and about two feet of the cable is basically encased in hot glue, attached to the switch plate and along the wall right until the point it goes behind some furniture. I check on it from time to time to repair any tearing away.
There are many different hot glues, not all have that property.
TIL.
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.
Not all hot glue comes in stick form for use in a glue gun. When I hear hot glue I first think of hide glue for example.
The ones that don't have the property are expensive specialized/stronger glue sticks. If you stick to dollar general you don't have to think about it.
At the risk of asking a really dumb question: Does this only work on PTFE or other flourine-compound surfaces?
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?
I really want to see this tested on HDPE. A simple, reliable adhesive for polyethylene could be a game changer.
> 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.
My mind immediately jumped to The Mote In God's Eye.
Isn't high-ductility associated with creep, especially under static loads? That would seem to be a downside of an adhesive like this.
Could this be used for hanging things from walls without damaging them?
In what context would one re-use a glue like this?
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.
I 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.
Yeah 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.
Is there really a use for this(temporary adhesives) outside of Fixturing?
The marine industry would love a (non water soluble) glue that achieves structural strength on PTFE and POM.
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.
That is generally what fixturing implies. A temporary bond that you use while making a part, and then remove when the part is complete.
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.
This might be very useful for bonding PTFE and aluminium on cookware if it ends up being food safe.
Any reason to think this flower of fluorines (seriously, that thing looks INTENSE) would be any more environmentally safe than PFOA?
I'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
If you don't cook with ethanol that is...
On the left hand side we see a lot very unhappy carbon.