Adhesion for Circularity- Debonding Substrates On-Demand

Developing new adhesive products that are "smart" and will de-bond at the end of their service life is the significant market trends to support sustainability and circularity. Adhesives, especially structural adhesives are meant to provide strong adhesion to hold dissimilar materials such as metals, inorganics, plastics or rubbers to provide structural integrity in automotive, aerospace, military, biomedical, packaging, power production and storage applications. It is strongly desired that these adhesives be reversible at the end of their service life through some unique stimulus or trigger. In this webinar two basic mechanisms: cohesive and adhesive failure, and the general strategies through polymer modification and additive approaches to achieve "Adhesion-on-Demand” will be outlined.  Additionally, various choices of stimulus such as thermal, UV irradiation, chemical, etc. for debonding and their advantages/ & disadvantages will be discussed. The primary focus is on crosslinked epoxy and polyurethane systems. There is also a brief discussion on reversible adhesive systems found in nature.

Please note: There are no PDF slides available; only recording available for this On Demand webinar.

Objectives:

Scientific approaches to achieve smart adhesion on the basis of practical examples.

Agenda:

1. Background/Introduction
2. Adhesion/De-bonding mechanisms/ approaches
3. Adhesive chemistries/triggers
4. Reversible adhesive systems in nature
5. Case studies/examples

SPEAKERS

Grace Wan, Ph.D.
Core R&D Fellow, The Dow Chemical Company 

Dr. Grace Wan is a R&D/TS&D Fellow in Corporate R&D of the Dow Chemical Company.  Grace has over 20 years of experience in the chemical and adhesives industry and has successfully led the development of many impactful commercial products which have been recognized with prestigious R&D 100 and Edison awards.  She has held dozens of patents, 3 book chapters, and have published and presented 50+ papers.  Grace has received 2021 SASE Technical Achievement award from the Society of Asian Scientists & Engineers (SASE) and 2021 Dow Great Lake Fellow Excellent in Science award. In 2024, Grace was awarded the Robert L. Patrick Fellow of the Adhesion Society in recognition of her outstanding contributions to adhesion science.

Wayne Zhang
Core R&D Fellow, The Dow Chemical Company

Wayne Zhang is the Core R&D fellow in Dow Chemical Co. Ltd. His research interests span across the material design and development associated with fracture mechanics and dispersion theory, which have been greatly aided by AI models. Prior to current role, Wayne took various Asia Pacific R&D leadership roles in Dow Epoxy and PU business and Core R&D MSE (material science & engineering). His previous interest focused on oxazolidone chemistry for industrial composites and electrical insulation, and cardanol derivatives for protective coating and civil engineering. Before joined Dow in 2007, Wayne worked for PPG Automotive Refinish, Ciba Performance Polymers, and China Coating Research Institute. In 1989, Wayne graduated from Fudan University in Shanghai and earned his bachelor’s degree in physics chemistry.