When it comes to underwater adhesion, shellfish are the true experts. Mussels, barnacles, and oysters attach to rocks with apparent ease. Yet our man-made glues often fail when trying to stick in wet environments. Results described herein focus on a copolymer mimic of mussel adhesive proteins, poly(catechol-styrene). Underwater bonding was examined as a function of parameters including polymer molecular weight and composition. In doing so, several surprising results emerged. Poly(catechol-styrene) may be the strongest underwater adhesive found to date. Bonding even exceeded that of the reference biological system, live mussels. Adhesion was also found to be stronger under salt water than deionized water. Such unexpected findings may contradict an earlier proposal in which charged amino acids were suggested to be key for mussel adhesive function. Taken together, these discoveries are helping us to both understand biological adhesion as well as develop new materials with properties not accessed previously.

Antifouling properties of materials play crucial roles in many important applications such as biomedical implants, marine antifouling coatings, biosensing, and membranes for separation. Poly(ethylene glycol) (or PEG) containing polymers and...

With global shipping accounting for 3.5% of annual fossil fuel use, we have incentive to keep hulls clean from encrusting foulers including barnacles, oysters, and mussels. Current antifouling coatings function by releasing biocidal copper into the surrounding waters. Rather than poisoning the oceans, environmentally benign approaches to defeating biological adhesion are in great demand. Recent chemical characterization insights have found that oxidative cross-linking of proteins plays a potentially key role in the formation of several bioadhesives. Here, antioxidant compounds were placed into coatings in order to quench oxidative chemistry and inhibit glue formation. Antioxidant-containing surfaces decreased mussel adhesion relative to controls. Attacking the mechanisms of biological adhesion may provide us with a new strategy for foul release coatings and minimize the environmental impacts of shipping.