Multipurpose and Durable Adhesive Hydrogel Assisted by Adenine and Uracil from Ribonucleic Acid.

Abstract

Nucleobase pairs of adenine and uracil (A-U) from ribonucleic acid are of particular interest for various promising material properties. Herein, a novel polyacrylamide hydrogel with adhesive properties that are assisted by adenine and uracil has been designed and investigated. The incorporation of adenine and uracil enables the formation of a polyacrylamide hydrogel with remarkable adhesive behaviour with various materials including polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), plastics, rubber, glasses, metal, ceramics and wood. Moreover, the adhesive hydrogel can easily and directly adhere to humid biological tissues without any extra process, including heart, liver, spleen, lung, kidney, bone and muscle of mouse. More impressively, even after repeated peeling tests (10×), the AU-mediated polyacrylamide hydrogel still exhibits excellent durable adhesion for various materials. From mechanical contact tests, the adhesion energy of the A-U adhesive hydrogel is 47.9 J m-2 , which is nearly nine times that of polyacrylamide hydrogel (5.3 J m-2 ). The 90° peeling strength for aluminium, titanium, silica rubbers, glasses, PTFE and hogskin is 518, 645, 445, 396, 349, and 119 N m-1 , respectively. The multipurpose and durable adhesive behaviour of hydrogels assisted by adenine and uracil indicated the promise of nucleobase pairs from ribonucleic acid for the future development of adhesive materials.