On September 21, 2023, Professor Xu Ming of nanocarbon Research Group published a review of "Research progress in carbon nanotube adhesive materials" in the "chinese Science Bulletin", describing the adhesion mechanism of carbon nanotubes and collating the research progress and challenges in the adhesion properties of macro aggregates. Dry adhesive materials have the function of connecting two interfaces through surface interaction forces, and are indispensable substances in social life and production. Dry adhesive materials are mainly divided into polymer adhesive materials, hydrogel adhesive materials and carbon nanotube adhesive materials. Among them, carbon nanotubes have extremely high length-to-diameter ratio and superior mechanical, thermal and electrical properties, and have been proved to be ideal components of advanced adhesive materials. After long-term efforts, researchers have prepared carbon nanotube adhesive materials with high adhesion strength, and demonstrated the application potential of carbon nanotube adhesion in biomedicine, electronic devices and other fields.

In this paper, the development history of carbon nanotube adhesion is described, and the mechanism of carbon nanotube adhesion is explored from the perspective of microstructure detection and simulation calculation. Secondly, the research methods on the adhesion properties of carbon nanotubes are summarized, and the strategies and methods to improve the adhesion properties of carbon nanotubes are listed. Finally, the differences in preparation methods, structural characteristics and adhesion properties of carbon nanotube adhesive materials, polymer adhesive materials and hydrogel adhesive materials were compared in detail, and the future research direction of carbon nanotube adhesive materials was prospected. This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program (2022YFB3807700), the National Natural Science Foundation (51972127), the Shenzhen Science and Technology Innovation Commission (JCYJ20190809102607400), JCYJ20210324135207020) and Hubei Natural Science Foundation (2022CFA031).

The article links: https://doi.org/10.1360/TB-2023-0681