posted on 2023-02-03, 18:03authored byMengxue Guo, Gang Li, Minkun Cai, Xingyu Hou, Kaixi Huang, Jigen Tang, Chuan Fei Guo
Pottery
is the oldest art and plays a landmark role in human civilization.
The repair of ceramic relics often uses acrylic resins and cyanoacrylate
adhesives. However, existing adhesives often take hours to get cured,
and wet adhesion is not possible. We herein propose a redox initiator-triggered
hydrogel adhesive, of which robust (∼700 J m–2) and wet adhesion with potsherds can be achieved within a few seconds.
The high toughness lies in the self-limited delocalized rupture of
the porous interface, and the wet adhesion is due to the hydrophilic
precursor and its free radical polymerization. The hydrogel adhesive
also exhibits high aging resistance for stable preservation of ∼400
annuals. We have applied the adhesive to the restoration of artifacts
excavated from Yinxu, Anyang (∼1300 BC) and the Xia Jiao Shan
site (∼4000 BC, Neolithic), and the adhesive is expected to
be extended to applications beyond archeology.