Marine mussels and barnacles are sessile biofouling organisms that adhere to a number of surfaces in wet environments and maintain remarkably strong bonds. Previous synthetic approaches to mimic biological wet adhesive properties have focused mainly on the catechol moiety, present in mussel foot proteins (mfps), and especially rich in the interfacial mfps, for example, mfp-3 and -5, found at the interface between the mussel plaque and substrate. Barnacles, however, do not use Dopa for their wet adhesion, but are instead rich in noncatecholic aromatic residues. Due to this anomaly, we were intrigued to study the initial contact adhesion properties of copolymerized acrylate films containing the key functionalities of barnacle cement proteins and interfacial mfps, for example, aromatic (catecholic or noncatecholic), cationic, anionic, and nonpolar residues. The initial wet contact adhesion of the copolymers was measured using a probe tack testing apparatus with a flat-punch contact geometry. The wet contact adhesion of an optimized, bioinspired copolymer film was ∼15.0 N/cm(2) in deionized water and ∼9.0 N/cm(2) in artificial seawater, up to 150 times greater than commercial pressure-sensitive adhesive (PSA) tapes (∼0.1 N/cm(2)). Furthermore, maximum wet contact adhesion was obtained at ∼pH 7, suggesting viability for biomedical applications.

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97Reaction of hydroxyethylpiperazine with two moles of fatty acid, followed by quaternization with methyl chloride, methyl bromide or dimethyl sulfate, resulted in new quaternaries useful as biodegradable fabric softeners. Additional softeners were synthesized from hard tallow propane diamine by reaction with butyrolactone, followed by ethoxylation, esterification with one mole of fatty acid and quaternization. KEY WORDS: Biodegradable, butyrolactone, ester quats, fabric softeners, hydroxyethyl piperazine, quaternaries.8a X = MeSO4 bX= CI cX = Br