Adhesion and affinity of supramolecular adhesives on fluorinated surfaces

Fluoroplastics are a fascinating class of artificial polymeric materials with many applications in our daily life, scientific activities, and industrial production. Carbon-fluorine bonds in the main chains of fluoropolymers impart fluoroplastics with chemical inertness and low surface energy. Achieving effective surface wettability and strong adhesion to fluoroplastics is difficult for adhesive materials because of the lack of cohesion affinity and interfacial interactions. The key to the tough adhesion on fluoroplastics lies in realizing good wettability and high compatibility to surface-fluorinated substrates. Here, a new strategy is developed to address the adhesion challenges to fluoroplastics. The dynamic polymerization and cross-linking of thioctic acid and tetrafluorophthalic acid generate multiple fluorine-fluorine interactions and fluorohydrogen bonds, thus facilitating supramolecular adhesives with strong interfacial interactions to fluoroplastics. The macroscopic bulk state, good mechanical toughness, high cohesion energy density, and rapid self-healing capacity originating from non-covalent assembly provide the necessity for effective and long-term stable adhesion to fluoroplastics. This strategy demonstrates that an application-oriented material design is practical for fluoroplastics adhesion.