Powdered glue goes on dry and sticks when squished

Dried-up glue may come in useful. A new powdered form of adhesive developed by researchers in Japan could help in building hard-to-reach parts of cars or smartphones.

Most glues are either liquids that dry to form a bond, or solids that are heated to make them viscous and sticky, and then bond when cooled. Now Syuji Fujii of Osaka Institute of Technology in Japan and his colleagues have come up with a dry powder that becomes a sticky glue when squished.

The powder is made up of “liquid marbles” – beads of liquid coated in solid particles that trap the fluid inside. In this case, the team rolled spheres of a latex liquid in a layer of calcium-carbonate nanoparticles. The resulting drops are a few millimetres across and pour easily, but when put under pressure for a few seconds the nanoparticles are pushed inside, exposing the sticky liquid within to the surface.

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