New super strong glue grips non-stick surfaces and wipes away easily

In a research lab at the University of Tokyo, scientists have developed a new kind of glue. It's incredibly strong and highly stretchable, yet it washes away completely with a little alcohol. The science-journalism coverage adds useful context, while the strongest evidential footing still comes from the underlying data, papers or institutional documentation.

It is relevant because chemistry gains force when a claimed structure or process can be described with enough precision to be reproduced by others. Synthetic routes, spectroscopic signatures, yield under defined conditions and stability under realistic operating parameters are the currency of credibility in chemistry, and a result that lacks these details cannot be evaluated independently. The distance between a discovery on a laboratory bench and a process that works reliably at scale is measured in years of optimization, and each step reveals constraints that were invisible at smaller scale. Chemical structures of fluoro-crown ether phosphate with one (Cyclic FP-fmoc), two (Cyclic FP-fmoc2), and three (Cyclic FP-fmoc 3) fmoc groups, fluoro-crown ether diphosphate. (Left) Photo of PTFE plates, without surface treatment or cleaning, adhered by Cyclic FP-fmoc, with a contact area of 7 cm 2, supporting a weight of 8 kg.

Journal of the American Chemical Society (2026). In a research lab at the University of Tokyo, scientists have developed a new kind of glue.

This new glue is so strong that it can even bond to nonstick surfaces like Teflon, but all it takes is a little washing with ethanol to completely remove it without leaving any. The adhesive held firm against a tensile stress of 1.3 megapascals.

The plates, which were stuck together with a thin coating of the glue, were also able to lift and suspend an 8-kilogram (18-pound) weight. We developed a small-molecule adhesive CyclicFP-fmoc for PTFE, which exhibits a very high adhesive strength with an unprecedented ductile nature," commented the researchers in.

The broader interest lies in whether the claimed property or reaction pathway can be characterized with enough precision to support replication by other groups. Chemistry has a replication problem that is less discussed than the one in psychology or medicine, but it is real: synthetic procedures that work reliably in one laboratory sometimes fail to transfer, for reasons ranging from impure starting materials to undocumented temperature sensitivities. A result that comes with full experimental detail and a clear characterization of the product is far more valuable than one that reports a discovery without the procedural backbone.

The researchers showed that the recovered adhesive could be reused more than 10 times while retaining its performance. We rely on readers like you to keep independent science journalism alive.

Because this item comes through Phys. org Chemistry as science journalism, it should be treated as contextual reporting rather than primary evidence. Good science reporting can identify why a result matters, connect it to the wider literature and make technical work readable, but the decisive evidence remains in the original paper, dataset, mission release or technical record. That distinction is especially important when a story is later repeated by aggregators, because repetition increases visibility, not evidential strength.

The next step is to see whether independent groups working with orthogonal techniques reach compatible conclusions, and whether the result scales beyond the conditions used in the original study. Chemical discoveries that matter tend to be ones whose key properties can be measured by multiple spectroscopic, crystallographic or computational methods that are unlikely to share the same blind spots. Scalability, cost and long-term stability under realistic operating conditions are additional filters that come into play before any practical application becomes viable.

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