Hydrophobic Polymers with Adherend Complexing Sidechains as Durable Aerospace Adhesives

In support of NASA Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate and Aviation Safety Mission, NanoSonic has developed a series of moisture and corrosion mitigating, ultra-hydrophobic, environmentally tunable, nanophase separating adhesive modifiers and complementary high performance, wide service temperature range (-60C to 450C) structural adhesives. The smart nanostructured modifiers represent a significant discovery as the adhesion strength of our novel and commercial-off-the-shelf aerospace adhesives was increased by > 40% with inclusion of such systems upon aging in 100% relative humidity (RH), ten days, 140F. Of significant importance to manufacturability and dual-use commercialization, the novel modifying agents are inert, inorganic-organic, halogenated hybrid copolymers, and hence can be used with virtually any adhesive, paint or environmental aerospace materials systems. The inorganic poly(octahedral silsesquioxane) (POSS), fluorination and copolymer molecular weight can be synthetically engineered to complement any paste of film adhesive. The TRL of the novel adhesive system would be increased from 6-8 during Phase II.