Abstract Background: Underwater adhesion of polymeric adhesives is highly desirable in specific applications such as wound dressings, wearable devices, bioelectronic devices, biosensors, and water pipeline leakage repairing. However, underwater bonding is considerably different from bonding in air because interfacial water molecules substantially weaken the intimate contact adhesion between the adhesive and submerged surfaces, thus significantly limiting the application of adhesives in various fields. Method: This review was compiled by searching relevant references on PubMed database (before April 2025) based on selected keywords. Results: Recently, many wet adhesion technologies and diverse and flexible adhesive materials have been employed to address the weak adhesion strengths and inferior mechanical properties in underwater environments. Among several strategies, mussel-inspired catechol-based underwater adhesion has gained the attention of scientists because mussel-inspired tissue adhesives (TAs) demonstrate numerous advantages including many interactions with substrates, various designs of some interesting smart TAs, and excellent adhesion based on several interfacial interactions dominated by 3,4-dihydroxyphenylalanine, a catecholic amino acid in mussel adhesive proteins. Conclusion: We discuss the mechanism of catechol-based underwater adhesion, classification of underwater adhesives, and characteristics, applications, advantages, and disadvantages of dopamine (DA)-modified polymeric TAs. Furthermore, we review stimuli-responsive TAs and the essential factors affecting the adhesions of DA-modified TAs in underwater environments. Finally, we discuss some current technical challenges and future perspectives for underwater adhesion.
Cho et al. (2026) studied this question.