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Adhesives typically fall into two categories: those that have high but irreversible adhesion strength due to the formation of covalent bonds at the interface and are slow to deploy, and others that are fast to deploy and the adhesion is reversible but weak in strength due to formation of noncovalent bonds. Synergizing the advantages from both categories remains challenging but pivotal for the development of the next generation of wound dressing adhesives. Here, we report a fast and reversible adhesive consisting of dynamic boronic ester covalent bonds, formed between poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) and boric acid (BA) for potential use as a wound dressing adhesive. Mechanical testing shows that the adhesive film has strength in shear of 61 N/cm 2 and transcutaneous adhesive strength of 511 N/cm 2 , generated within 2 min of application. Yet the film can be effortlessly debonded when exposed to excess water. The mechanical properties of PVA/BA adhesives are tunable by varying the cross-linking density. Within seconds of activation by water, the surface boronic ester bonds in the PVA/BA film undergo fast debonding and instant softening, leading to conformal contact with the adherends and reformation of the boronic ester bonds at the interface. Meanwhile, the bulk film remains dehydrated to offer efficient load transmission, which is important to achieve strong adhesion without delamination at the interface. Whether the substrate surface is smooth (e.g., glass) or rough (e.g., hairy mouse skin), PVA/BA adhesives demonstrate superior adhesion compared to the most widely used topical skin adhesive in clinical medicine, Dermabond. 

An important problem in lubrication is the squeezing of a thin liquid film between a rigid sphere and an elastic substrate under normal contact. Numerical solution of this problem typically uses iteration techniques. A difficulty with iteration schemes is that convergence becomes increasingly difficult under increasingly heavy loads. Here we devise a numerical scheme that does not involve iteration. Instead, a linear problem is solved at every time step. The scheme is fully automatic, stable and efficient. We illustrate this technique by solving a relaxation test in which a rigid spherical indenter is brought rapidly into normal contact with a thick elastic substrate lubricated by a liquid film. The sphere is then fixed in position as the pressure relaxes. We also carried out relaxation experiments on a lubricated soft PDMS (polydimethysiloxane) substrate under different conditions. These experiments are in excellent agreement with the numerical solution. 

When a poroelastic gel is released from a patterned mold, surface stress drives deformation and solvent migration in the gel and flattens its surface profile in a time-dependent manner. Specifically, the gel behaves like an incompressible solid immediately after removal from the mold, and becomes compressible as the solvent is able to squeeze out of the polymer network. In this work, we use the finite element method (FEM) to simulate this transient surface flattening process. We assume that the surface stress is isotropic and constant, the polymer network is linearly elastic and isotropic, and that solvent flow obeys Darcy's law. The short-time and long-time surface profiles can be used to determine the surface stress and drained Poisson's ratio of the gel. Our analysis shows that the drained Poisson's ratio and the diffusivity of the gel can be obtained using interferometry and high-speed video microscopy, without mechanical measurement.