The top layer of my cell phone cover unfortunately came loose, so I had to use some tacky glue to put it back together. I was curious what was making it stick. When it comes to super glue at least, doesn’t the description below make it sound like hydrogen bonding?
“How Superglue works?
The major constituent of Superglue is a chemical called cyanoacrylate. Its chemical formula is C5H5NO2. What’s so special about Cyanoacrylate is that it is an acrylic resin that forms extremely strong bonds almost immediately. Superglue contains many other chemicals such as zinc oxide, zinconium, and zinc sulphate.
The only thing superglue needs to form these strong bonds is hydroxyl ions found in water. This makes applying superglue easy as almost all surfaces contain traces or a thin layer of water. As Superglue comes in contact with water it forms long, strong chains, which bind the two surfaces together almost immediately.Superglue forms an almost unbreakable, waterproof bond within seconds.”
I was intrigued by your post Charlotte and also the fact that
it received comments, so I wanted to look into superglue. I doubted
that it was H-bonding since the strength wouldn’t match the physical
properties of the glue, so I was thinking that it should be making
covalent bonds and have some sort of a polymerization reaction. My
search lead me to this link: http://lib.ru/STERLINGB/f_sf_07.txt which I
think you should all take a look at. Apparently there are many
different theories of how glues work and NSF even created a Center for
Polymeric Adhesives and Composites in 1989 to adres some of these.
Anyway, there is a specific discussion on the”superglue”
there.