Protein adhesives

Abstract

Nature uses a wide variety of chemicals for providing adhesion internally (e.g., cell to cell) and externally (e.g., mussels to ships and piers). This adhesive bonding is chemically and mechanically complex, involving a variety of proteins, carbohydrates, and other compounds.Consequently,the effect of protein structures on adhesive properties is only partially understood and creates an inherent difficulty in understanding protein structure-property relationships. This complexity has limited researchers in the past to mainly depend on empirical studies for insight, with a few exceptions. For most protein adhesives, bonding of wood has not been a problem under dry use conditions, as the strength of the adhesives is sufficient to cause wood failure, but the adhesive bonds are weaker under wet-use conditions. Because of its economic importance, protein bonding has been widely studied the adhesion of mussels and barnacles to marine surfaces. The bioadhesion of organisms in marine environments is not covered here, because these proteins have not been used for formulating wood adhesives, but they have led to biomimicry and bioinspired research on modified and synthetic proteins that could be used as adhesives, as covered in Section 5.9.

Citation

Frihart, Charles R.; Lorenz, Linda F. 2018. Protein adhesives. In: Pizzi, A; Mittal, K.L., eds. Handbook of adhesive technology, third edition. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press: 145-175. Chapter 5.