So, now that web shooters are close to a horizon, let's talk polymers. I think other than me, Thebatsam is the only person I know that knows anything about polymer research and chemistry.
So I'm going to do a little lesson for this, and maybe it might help us in the rearch.
Everything is composed of atoms. Atoms bond to eachother to form mollecules. Large mollecules with repeating intervals are called monomers. Monomers that get crosslinked are called polymers.
Now a crosslink is a chemical reaction. A chemical reaction is a when bonds are either broken or formed between parts of mollecules or full ones.
There are four or five different kind of bonds. The all fall under the category of single, double, and triple bonds. There are two other bonds that are very unique. There is hydrogen bonding, which is pretty strong, and silicate bonds which are stronger. They are unique bonds that belong to only a few mollecules. SiO2 is one of them. Those are the ones that as hard as diamonds.
Now the bonds we want to focus on are hydrogen bonds. The reason: They create the weirdest properties. In thixotropic (Shear-thinning) and Shear thickening (I don't know the scientific name for that.) fluids, their properties are all based on the fact that small hydrogen bonds will break, and find others close by.
Other atoms that we want include carbon and oxygen. These make up most of everything natural. Carbon is good for strength and oxygen is good for keeping the hydrogens close.
Now another important thing to look out for is Hydroxide. These are ions. Ions are molecules with a charge. They are good for bonding when you can find them. Hydroxide is good because their bonds are easier to replace. They are responsible for most reactions in glues like cyanoacrylate. Also, the more OH- they have, the more biodegradable they are.
As for the issue of biodegradability, there are ways to cause it spontaneously, but it involved creating deoxidized or dehydrolyzed bonds. If it sounds complicated, it's because it is.
Now for functional groups. Most time when chmists mix stuff, they either are guessing, or using functional groups. Functional groups are mollecules that are very common that always bond the same way to other things. They follow rules, and as such, they generally have similar properties.
Finally let's pool this together into this project. We are looking for an adhesive polymer. Now whether this be a property of the strong formula, or it is an additive, I don't know. What I do know is that there are three ways (in our case) where we can make a bond.
We can use natural adhesives called resins. These are proteins that are very good at adhesion. Scientists still can't figure out why this works.
We can use chemical adhesives. These are like cyanoacrylate which are liquid until they make bonds with the two objects that are bonding. This is strong, but brittle.
Finally, there are Van Der Wal forces. These are the forces that allow geckos to climb the ceilings. They are caused by small mollecular bonds interacting with objects on a small scale. In our case hydrogen bonds are forming with an object. Even though the individual force is weak, since there are are so many temporary bonds at once, it makes it strong. If you want a better explanation, type "Gecko Spiderman" into your favorite search engine.
So this is the very watered down, basic explanation, and I'm going to wager that most of you knew most of this already, but it will give you some clues about what you should be looking for.
