Who says this will be a specialized adhesive? If it works as advertised, it could be a super-glue alternative with easy unglueability. That would be an attractive consumer product; and the type of product that could easily end up on someones hands.

Hand sanitizer is also contaminated with other crap... presumably that impacts the adhesive if you're attempting to "recycle" it? I agree, what a weird line.

I can think of a few things that relate, as someone who is more in the business of taking random things apart for repair than building them new:

In the mysterious future, I might have a widget that needs to be disassembled which uses this glue.

And I'm at the shop right now; as I look around the bench, I don't see any industrial products that are primarily ethanol. It's just not something we typically have a use for.

But there is a giant pump-bottle of hand sanitizer that is still right there by the doorway as a holdover from the COVID days. So if this adhesive ever begins to show up in products, and if hand sanitizer is Good Enough, then I'll be using that.

It saves a trip to the hardware store for gallon-sized can of "denatured alcohol" (which is typically very heavy with methanol at an unspecified ratio), and it avoids questions about buying/having a bottle of Everclear from the liquor store.

I think it's worthwhile to mention the possibility of using hand sanitizer for this purpose.

One example might be ungluing a lithium pouch cell (usually polyamide film outer surface, which is a pretty low-surface-energy polymer) for home replacement. Electrically-debonded adhesives are a better option here, but not sure what the cost trade-offs look like.

I will refer you to my ER physician friends, who have stories of people attempting to use adhesives of all varieties in the most absurd ways. People will apparently attempt to put anything, anywhere.

Supergluing your fingers together or other bits of skin is also a well known issue people face when using glue. So it could just be a hedge against people's fears

Stick on nails

I read it as "specifically for ptfe" too. Where would you glue that? (Heart surgery?)

Maybe a 2026 remake of MacGyver?

Gelled solvents are useful for softening adhesives in certain situations far better than the pure substance

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This website often suggests totally bad ideas, like brittle epoxies for bonds they shouldn't be used for.

The truth is nowadays you can just choose your favorite brand and they almost certainly have a correct, and good, adhesive selector.

For example, for loctite, you should just use: https://www.henkel-adhesives-selector.com/

It's been a while since I've seen such an ad-plagued site.

delete

EDIT 2: I think they are non-toxic and inert. But I tried to find my source for this and I am failing badly. so deleting this comment

EDIT: I agree they are very waste full since they do not live that long. I have owned three non-stick pans, my cast iron pans have outlived all of them by decades.

I saw this and was immediately excited for use with UHMWPE. Too bad it doesn't work on polyethylenes

It's like soap for fluorine compounds.

No kidding. Fluoro-anything needs to be checked out for impact on the ozone layer, problems that happens when it burns, and problems that happens when it flakes off and gets ingested by people.

For anybody not getting the reference, standard glue gun glue is obviously applied freshly melted and hot, and it is dissolved/debonded cleanly with isopropyl alcohol.

I have an electric guitar which has an uncovered electronic cavity in the back, where the volume pot is mounted, and all wiring passing through it. I have a DPDT sliding switch there which is just held by hot glue to the side of the cavity, and recessed in a bit so that it isn't accidentally moved. It's been that way for years. From time to time it used to come off spontaneously, requiring a re-gluing, but I learned to do it better.

When redoing the wiring for one reason or another, it's trivially easy to peel the switch off with a screwdriver and remove the glue.

There isn't a compellingly better way of attaching that switch there. It has mounting screw holes but they point in the wrong direction, into the cavity. To screw it down, I would need some sort of long risers that somehow attach to the bottom of the cavity and are firm enough to resist the side to side push. Little L-brackets could work that attach to the side of the cavity. It's a very small cavity: hard to screw such brackets in, but that can be solved. Even if the brackets themselves were permanently mounted, not having to be removed when the switch is taken out, it would still take more time than with the glue.

Another use I have for glue is to secure a household internet connection. It's just a thin wire coming out of a RJ jack in the wall, in a room where kids play. The installer didn't crimp the plug into the cable insulation. The situation is that the insulation ends a few millimeters before the RJ plug, leaving a couple of bare wires that seem like 22 AWG crimped in. I "kid-proofed" this with hot glue. Hot glue is all over that plug, and about two feet of the cable is basically encased in hot glue, attached to the switch plate and along the wall right until the point it goes behind some furniture. I check on it from time to time to repair any tearing away.

There are many different hot glues, not all have that property.

I have a weird use case, but this is actually wildly useful to me.

I use teflon (sometimes nylon, but mostly teflon) painter pyramids/holders/etc, because i spray finish stuff that is very good at adhering to lots of things, and are acetone based - VOC compliance pretty much forced acetone into solvent based stuff. This in turn pretty much makes finishes melt into anything except PE, nylon, teflon, even if they wouldn't otherwise.

To keep the pyramids and things where i want them, i have magnets glued into them. But because it's PFTE, the magnets don't really stay adhered well, even with (currently) specialized adhesives and i end up regluing them after every few times, often before the project finishes.

What i really want is an adhesive like this one, where i can glue the magnets in, but also remove them after the project finishes, because i'll go soak the pyramids in solvent or something to clean them, but don't want to damage any magnet coatings.

IANA chemist but my guess is that it's of particular interest because PTFE surfaces are especially non-stick, and non-PTFE surfaces have good options that require less exotic chemistry.

The question I have is how long will it be till the report comes out indicating that DuPont has been dumping this product and intermediate compounds into local waterways. I give it 15 years?

I really want to see this tested on HDPE. A simple, reliable adhesive for polyethylene could be a game changer.

Any reason to think this flower of fluorines (seriously, that thing looks INTENSE) would be any more environmentally safe than PFOA?

I really don't know about food safe. Or safe for any end consumer, really. They absolutely need to do some severe toxicity testing. Because this funny new glue is an organic phosphate which in itself already raises some serious questions. On top of that, the ring also contains two perfluoropinacol moieties which could be released e.g. on heating or through interaction with acids or something else. This is a highly volatile molecule and "fatal in contact with skin," i.e. of the highest toxicity class. That ain't no good.

If you don't cook with ethanol that is...

The marine industry would love a (non water soluble) glue that achieves structural strength on PTFE and POM.

Are you asking if there's use for temporarily sticking stuff to other stuff?

Yes, plenty. Especially if it sticks well while needed, and then can be non-destructively undone when no longer needed.