Adhesives.org Newsbriefs
February 2010

Headlines
Adhesive and Sealant Council News

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Adhesives 101 Webinar Series Begins March 2
Earn AIA Credit; Attend the High Performance Roofing Webinar Series

In the Field

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"Unique Adhesive Cuts Costs for Plastic Oil Pans"
"How to Make Buildings With Glue"
"How Do You Mend a Torn Picasso?"
"Company Gives Chesley Sewer Lines New Lease on Life"
"Adhesives and Tubing "
"Dow Corning Coatings Protect World's Tallest Building"

In the Lab

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"It Sounds Off the Wall But May Be Very Much On"
"Liquid Crystals Keep Food Fresher"
"New Life for Liposuctioned Fat"
"Smart Mud Could Be the New Plastic"
"Egg White Could Be Foetuses' Puncture Repair Kit"

General Engineering

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"Educators Seek New Ways to Steer Kids Toward Technical Fields"
"U.S. Keeps Science Lead, but Other Countries Gain"

Adhesives help make products lighter, stronger and more durable, often saving time and money in the process. But it’s imperative to know how and when to use them to maximize the many advantages they offer over traditional bonding methods. Build your foundation of adhesives knowledge by registering for Adhesives 101.

Adhesives 101 will begin on March 2, and run every other Tuesday until May 11. Each session will examine one of six adhesive topics to help participants better understand the science behind different adhesive technologies and the benefits adhesives bring to specific applications, including versatility that helps improve product design and streamline industrial production.

This course was especially created for design-engineers involved in using adhesives in product design and assembly as well as sales and other nontechnical adhesives industry professionals.

Don't miss this great introductory series on adhesives. Click here to learn more and register.
The High Performance Roofing webinar series will be offered on March 4 and 11. It will provide participants with an overview of energy policy, cool roofs, metal roofing details, Life Cycle Assessment in low slope roofing and key sustainable principles.

Created for building owners, building envelope field engineers, architects, designers, specifiers, engineers, product managers, end-users and stakeholders in the roofing industry, the High Performance Roofing webinar series will help participants:

• Identify sustainable roof system options available for today’s building owner and designer;
• Learn the critical nature of correct sealant selection and use within the metal roofing system;
• Examine which roofing membranes can currently be recycled from construction sites; and
• Discover why rooftops provide an unequaled platform for achieving critical energy and environmental goals.

The series consists of three parts, each eligible for AIA continuing education credit. Click here for the webinar schedule and registration information.

In the Field

Unique Adhesive Cuts Costs for Plastic Oil Pans
Design News (01/10) Smock, Doug

A government-industry research collaboration in Germany has created several interesting new materials technologies, including a new silicone adhesive sealant for rapidly emerging plastic oil plans. The new adhesives replace solid gaskets, resulting in weight savings of about 40 percent in injection molded pans, which have been under development in the United States and Europe for more than 20 years and are just now breaking into major production models. BASF worked with Wacker in a Berlin-based research initiative called INPRO to develop the adhesive, which is so strong that the integrity of the oil pan seal with aluminum engine blocks works under all common testing conditions, including storage in oil and in a blow-by-medium and thermal shock tests between temperatures of -40 and 150 degrees Celsius. The use of the adhesive allows for the removal of a solid gasket and several screw joints, allowing for a cost savings of 20 percent to 25 percent per oil pan. The RTV-2 liquid silicone rubber can be machine applied, cures at room temperature, and is resistant to oil, heat, and blow-by gases. The outstanding adhesive and sealant capabilities of the new RTV-2 could allow for innovative engine design. The sealant's strength comes from an inorganic backbone that gives silicone elastomers not only better heat resistance, but better resistance to weathering, aging, and chemicals than organic polymers.
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How to Make Buildings With Glue
Spiegel Online (02/02/2010)

German scientists have discovered a method for making adhesives used in the construction industry more heat-resistant, potentially enabling the development of buildings held together by glue. Scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute for Wood Research in Braunschweig, Germany, have developed a way to harden adhesives that will allow construction work to continue on the Metropol Parasol in Seville, Spain. The Metropol Parasol is a planned group of mushroom-shaped buildings by Berlin architect J. Mayer H. that will be erected in the city's Plaza de la Encarnacion square. The structures' load-bearing elements will be attached to each other with adhesives instead of with screws, but the adhesives originally intended for the project would only work in temperatures of up to 60 degrees Celsius, which cause some concern that the structures could fall apart in the Spanish sun. The researchers suggested making the adhesive more heat-resistant through a process known as "tempering." "Once the construction components have been glued together they are reheated - and that leads to a hardening reaction," says construction technology expert Dirk Kruse. The researchers report that the tempering will allow the glue to retain its adhesive power in temperatures up to 70 degrees Celsius. Kruse says this improved capability will increase the use of adhesive technology in construction.
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How Do You Mend a Torn Picasso?
London Guardian (United Kingdom) (01/27/10) Khaleeli, Homa

A six-inch tear that a Picasso painting suffered at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art would be repaired with a modern-day, easy-to-use adhesive that is non-aqueous, as water can cause shrinkage in the canvas, says modern paintings specialist Michael Robinson. The adhesive would be applied manually with an extremely fine tool, perhaps a dental pick. The restorer would view the area of the damage under magnification, while another option is to reweave the canvas by twisting the individual threads back together under microscopic conditions. Crumbling paint could be re-adhered with fish glue under a magnifying glass, or a heat-activated sealant. The entire back of the canvas could be lined, but the painting is more likely to be patched. A piece of synthetic sail cloth would be sufficient.
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Company Gives Chesley Sewer Lines New Lease on Life
Owen Sound Sun Times (01/26/10) Golem, Mary

Clean Water Works (CWW) of Ottawa has been refurbishing the sewers of Chesley in Arran-Elderslie by lining them with a woven polyester felt tube coated with plastic. The tube is impregnated with a liquid epoxy that is frozen for shipping and then heated after installation. "Once the epoxy has cured it becomes a solid mass which lines the internal dimensions of an existing pipe, taking the form of its interior and shape and creating a solid seal," says CWW supervisor Dave Legault. "It'll last a lifetime because it doesn't break down or rust, erode or break." Legault says the product is a less expensive and less disruptive alternative to sewer rehabilitation than street excavation. "It's like getting a brand new sewer at less than 1/10 of the cost," he notes. Two thousand meters of sewer lines in Chesley will be lined by Arran-Elderslie at a cost of $300,000.
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Adhesives and Tubing
Assembly Magazine (01/22/10) Weber, Austin

Medical device manufacturers are looking for alternatives to traditional solvent welding, increasing the demand for advanced adhesives. Adhesives provide several benefits over traditional welding techniques, such as the ability to join dissimilar materials, including many hard-to-bond substrates. Adhesives can also be flexible or rigid, used to fill large gaps, and achieve hermetic seals. There is also a variety of dispensing equipment available to make adhesive application simple and easy to automate. Adhesives are also compatible with a wide variety of materials, including common tubing materials like flexible PVC, polyurethane, and silicone. Furthermore, adhesives are becoming increasingly popular because they efficient bond combinations of materials, which is not easily accomplished with welding techniques. "Significant differences in chemical make-up and physical characteristics between components make adhesives the ideal assembly method," says Christine Salerni Marotta, a medical focus segment manager at Henkel Corp. "Adhesives enable designers to lessen the tight tolerances, since they will fill a range of gaps. Although varied by adhesive chemistry, gaps above and beyond 0.5 inch are achievable with typical medical device adhesives." There are three primary categories for adhesives used for plastic medical tubing assembly applications, specifically light-cure adhesives, cyanoacrylates, and silicone. Light-cure adhesives are often the first choice if one of the materials used is lit transmissible or if light can reach the bondline, primarily due to its rapid cure time and high strength. Cyanoacrylates are often used in tubing applications where light curing is not possible or undesirable due to its higher costs. Silicone adhesives are most often used when silicone tubing or components are present.
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Dow Corning Coatings Protect World's Tallest Building
Bay City Times (MI) (01/10/10) Kart, Jeff

Dow Corning silicones are helping to make the world's tallest building more energy-efficient and protect the structure from the harsh desert climate. The newly-opened Burj Dubai tower has more than 24,000 cladding panels spread over 132,000 square meters to minimize heat transmission and save energy. The cladding materials include high-performance reflective glazing, silicone sealants and structural adhesives. "We've been involved in many of the landmark buildings around the world for more than 60 years ... That experience and the proven performance of our silicone technologies played a critical role in this project," said Ron Fillmore, global executive director for Dow Corning.
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In the Lab

It Sounds Off the Wall But May Be Very Much On
Sydney Morning Herald (Australia) (02/03/10) Phillips, Nicky

Researchers have developed a palm-sized device that could allow humans to walk on walls. The device is made of layers of metal and silicon wafers, and is no thicker than a credit card. The device's adhesive capabilities are created by taking a film of water, held in the bottom layer, and pushing it through tiny holes in the middle layers to the surface using an electric pump. The droplets on the surface act as a bridge that sticks the device to another surface. University of Melbourne researchers Sally Gras says the adhesion comes from strong forces interacting between the water droplets and the other surface. Gras says the most exciting aspect about the device is that the stickiness can be turned on and off. Previous efforts to develop self-adhesive devices have largely been based on a vacuum, which stick more permanently. The new device pumps droplets of water to the surface and sucks them back in, which removes the stickiness. The device can be turned on and off in less than a millisecond, and can adhere to numerous surfaces, including plywood, sandpaper, lino, brick, and tiles. The lead author behind the device, Paul Steen from Cornell University, says the device could be used to make Spider-Man-like gloves or shoes, though a more practical application might be super-sticky Post-it notes capable of supporting considerable weight or being reused. Steen says the device was inspired by a beetle native to Florida capable of sticking to a leaf with a force 100 times its own weight.
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Liquid Crystals Keep Food Fresher
Laboratory Equipment (02/10)

More effective industrial sealants and enhanced food packaging could stem from a new liquid crystal molecule manipulation technique, according to Texas A&M University professor Zhengdong Cheng. He and his colleagues have succeeded in orienting disc-shaped molecules of liquid crystals into distinct and separate layers in a manner that is common with rod-shaped liquid crystal molecules. The disc shape of the platelets in conjunction with the layered configuration they form help to generate a sealant that is almost impermeable. Cheng says food would be kept fresher for longer periods if such a sealant could be incorporated into food packaging. Moreover, employing the technology in materials such as paint and industrial sealants could make pipelines more resistant to corrosion. "A problematic aspect of fuel-cell technology occurs when methanol passes through a polymer membrane inside of the cell, but if these discs can be added to the makeup of this polymer film, a membrane can be created that does not allow the methanol to escape through it, instead forcing the methanol to pass through the desired area," notes Cheng.
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New Life for Liposuctioned Fat
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (WI) (01/25/10) Black, Harvey

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin (UW) School of Medicine and Public Health are studying whether liposuctioned fat has potential as a neurosurgical adhesive. UW-Madison professor John Kuo writes in the December issue of the Journal of Neurosurgery that cerebrospinal fluid can leak out during brain operations that cut through the dura, and the current repair procedure is for neurosurgeons to seal the leak with a few grams of fat excised from the patient's abdomen. University of Southern California neurosurgeon Martin Weiss cautions that the abdominal incision carries the risk of a blood clot or infection. "If an 'off the shelf' fat graft could be obtained from a tissue bank, it would save the patient from an additional procedure, which saves additional scarring, risk of infection, bleeding, cosmetic or other complications," says UW-Madison research fellow Summer Hanson. "Storing it, to my knowledge, hasn't been done yet, but it's not far-fetched." Weiss says it would be necessary to ensure that the fat would come from liposuction patients who were free of disease. Kuo performed a pilot study with rabbits in a lab at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children to see if his liposuction fat concept had value, and foreign fat transplanted between rabbits proved successful without any rejections.
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Smart Mud Could Be the New Plastic
New Scientist (01/20/10) Barras, Colin

A mixture of water and clay could potentially replace plastics, according to researchers at the University of Tokyo. Takuzo Aida and his team mixed a few grams of clay with 100 grams of water in the presence of a tiny amount of a thickening agent called sodium polyacrylate and an organic "molecular glue." The thickening agent teases the clay into thin sheets to increase its surface area and allow the glue to obtain a stronger hold. The result is a mixture that is almost 98 percent water but is able to form a transparent and elastic hydrogel with enough mechanical strength to make a 3.5-centimeter-wide self-standing bridge. The strength of the material hinges on the sum of the forces acting between the molecules in the clay nanosheets and the glue, according to Aida. These supramolecular forces, like hydrogen bonds, also help trap water molecules between the clay sheets. Aida says some other hydrogels use covalent chemical bonds instead of supramolecular forces, but when the covalent bonds break the material loses strength. The gel can form in only three minutes, and manufacturing the material requires no understanding of the chemical processes involved, according to Aida. Craig Hawker, from the University of California in Santa Barbara, says a major breakthrough of the material is the overall simplicity of the procedure and the exceptional physical properties of the material. "Toughness, self-healing and robustness are just some of the initial physical properties that will be found for this new class of materials," says Hawker. "I predict that this approach will lead to the design of even more impressive materials in the near future."
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Egg White Could Be Foetuses' Puncture Repair Kit
Times of India (01/08/10)

Researchers at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, have demonstrated that egg white can function as a sealant for the amnion enclosing developing fetuses. Ken Moise and colleagues had already used purified, treated white from chicken eggs to repair ruptured condoms and balloons. The scientists took discarded human amnions and distended them across the bottom of an open-ended glass tube which was then filled with human amniotic fluid. The membrane was punctured, and purified egg white was applied to the rupture 30 seconds later. The investigators learned that 19 out of 21 tubes stopped leaking immediately, while the remaining two stopped after a second application of egg white.
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General Engineering

Educators Seek New Ways to Steer Kids Toward Technical Fields
Government Technology (01/27/10) Nichols, Russell

School systems across the United States are pushing students to pursue science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) by providing joint programs with local universities. For example, Hughes STEM High School in Cincinnati, Ohio, in collaboration with the University of Cincinnati, developed a digital backpack program, which provides students with an iPod, a digital camcorder, a tripod, and microphones, for hands-on learning. The school represents part of a statewide effort to create STEM schools and learning opportunities. In New York, the St. Lawrence-Lewis Board of Cooperative Educational Services joined with Clarkson University to create the St. Lawrence County STEM Partnership. The program unites faculty and students from Clarkson with 200 local instructors to enhance STEM teaching. The partnership includes workshops and summer programs with competitions. In Colorado, STEMapalooza was created by the University of Colorado and brought more than 100 exhibitors from around the state to promote STEM subjects and careers.
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U.S. Keeps Science Lead, but Other Countries Gain
Wall Street Journal (01/16/10) P. A5; Lahart, Justin

The United States remains the world's leader in science and technology, based on factors such as gross dollars spent, relative spending on research, research articles published, and patents granted, according to the National Science Board's biennial report on science and engineering. The report says the U.S. accounted for nearly one third of the $1.1 trillion spent on research and development (R&D) worldwide in 2007. From 1998 to 2007, R&D spending grew between five and six percent annually in the United States, Japan, and the European Union. However, R&D spending in India, South Korea, and Taiwan grew an average of nine to 10 percent per year during that period, and Chinese spending grew by more than 20 percent per year. Out of approximately 760,000 research articles published in 2008, 25 percent were written by U.S. researchers. Chinese scientists published about eight percent of the research articles, up from one percent in 1988. U.S.-based inventors accounted for 49 percent of the patents granted in 2008, down from 55 percent in 1995.
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