Removable adhesives for sustainable microelectronics

Adhesive Release adhesives on command

2024-09-25 Source: Press release | Translated by AI 2 min Reading Time

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Integrated microelectronic devices are often difficult to repair and recycle. Detachable adhesives play a key role here. A research team has discovered how adhesives can be released on command.

Adhesives that can be removed on command(Image: Wiley-VCH) — Adhesives that can be removed on command
(Image: Wiley-VCH)

The source of inspiration was the masters of underwater bonding: mussels. Shell-inspired adhesives were developed even earlier. These are based on the so-called thiol-quinone polyaddition, which produces polymers with adhesive thiol-catechol connectivities (TCC, thiol-substituted aromatic six-membered rings with two neighboring OH groups, which are responsible for the strong adhesive properties). The trick: if the catechol groups of the adhesive polymers are oxidized to quinones (six-membered rings with two oxygen atoms linked via double bonds), the adhesive strength decreases dramatically.

TCC adhesives with high adhesive strength and shear strength

The properties of such polymers can be adjusted via the backbone of the monomers. Kannan Balasubramanian, Hans Börner and their team from the Humboldt University of Berlin, the Leibniz Institute for Analytical Sciences (ISAS, Berlin), the Universidad Nacional de General San Martín (Buenos Aires), the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Polymer Research (Potsdam-Golm) and the company Henkel (Düsseldorf) have produced two different types of TCC adhesives with high adhesive strength and shear strength.

The scientists compared biobased, peptidic biscatechol precursors of DiDOPA, which is similarly found in mussels, with their fossil-based analog. Both adhesives also function under water and are insensitive to atmospheric oxygen and weak oxidizing agents. However, they lose their stickiness through oxidation with the strongly oxidizing sodium periodate (NaIO4), so that the adhesive residues can be easily peeled or wiped off the substrate in one piece.

Biomaterials with multifunctionality

While the oxidation of the fossil adhesive inactivates the catechols, but at the same time makes the adhesive more water-repellent, the biobased type shows deactivation due to a variety of other peptide functionalities without becoming significantly more hydrophobic. Börner explains: "The multifunctionality is typical of biomaterials, in which often only the key functionalities are switched off and not much else changes in the material. This circumstance enables a dramatically more efficient de-adhesion mechanism, which reduces the adhesive strength of the bio-based type by 99%." The reason for the poorer deactivation (60%) of the fossil adhesive lies in the compensation, as hydrophobic polymers such as those in Uhu are also very good adhesives.

In the longer term, the consortium is working on replacing chemical oxidation with direct electrochemical oxidation, which could be interesting for the repair of cell phones, for example.

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Date: 08.12.2025

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